CategoryLaw
U.S. Sues the Big Apple (the Tech One)
Apple claims the suit sets dangerous federal precedent
Are IVF Human Embryos “Children”? A Recent Court Decision
Neurologist Steven Novella claims that the Alabama Supreme Court ruling that they are “children” under the law “essentially referenced god”
If Information Is Wealth, Are Deepfakes a Form of Counterfeiting?
The current tech media overdose on panic over deepfakes. They could be drowning out practical ways of fighting back
Robert J. Marks on the Copyright Lawsuits Against the Chatbots
Essentially, the salad of material that the chatbot produces for users contains thousands of ingredients lifted without compensation from copyright holders
A Darwinian Argument for a Global Government
The evolutionary researchers worry that we have not evolved to be worthy of a global government and will face ecological ruin in consequence.
Let’s Apply Existing Laws to Regulate AI
No revolutionary laws needed to fight harmful botsIn a recent article, Professor Robert J. Marks reported how artificial intelligence (AI) systems had made false reports or gave dangerous advice: Prof. Marks suggested that instead of having government grow even bigger trying to “regulate” AI systems such as ChatGPT: How about, instead, a simple law that makes companies that release AI responsible for what their AI does? Doing so will open the way for both criminal and civil lawsuits. Strict Liability for AI-Caused Harms Prof. Marks has a point. Making AI-producing companies responsible for their software’s actions is feasible using two existing legal ideas. The best known such concept is strict liability. Under general American law, strict liability exists when a defendant is liable for committing an action Read More ›
U.S. Department of Justice Sues Google (Again)
The DOJ claims the tech giant is unlawfully monopolizing the digital advertising marketThe U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is suing Google, claiming the technology company has monopolized the digital advertising market. This marks the second federal anti-trust suit against Google. Google has led the digital advertising market for years, although companies like TikTok and Amazon are becoming more viable competitors. Despite the competition, Google still raked in $209B in advertising in 2021, per a briefing from 1440 News, and its 2022 financial report is expected to disclose similar numbers. The official complaint notes the benefit and importance of a “vibrant internet” in American life but emphasizes the centrality of economic diversity and competition. Section 4 of the complaint claims “the ad tech space is broken,” further explaining, One industry behemoth, Google, Read More ›
Three Artists Launch Lawsuit Against Stable Diffusion
Content creators claim new AI tools violate copyright and intellectual propertyThree artists, Sarah Andersen, Kelly McKernan and Karla Ortiz are filing a lawsuit against the AI image generators Midjourney, Stability AI, and DeviantArt. They claim the AI tools commit copyright violation and infringement of intellectual property. The lawsuit appears amid growing concerns among content creators over the increasing popularity and use of new AI image and text generators like DALL-E and ChatGPT. According to a report from Techspot, The trio have launched a class action on behalf of all artists affected and are “seeking compensation for damages caused by Stability AI, DeviantArt, and Midjourney, and an injunction to prevent future harms.” The lawsuit alleges direct copyright infringement, vicarious copyright infringement related to forgeries, violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act Read More ›
You’ve Got a Robot Lawyer in Your Pocket (Really?)
The DoNotPay AI lawyer program might be useful for fighting parking tickets but it is unsuited to serious litigation where much more complex issues are at stakeThe Gutfeld! program on Fox News on January 6, 2023, recently had fun discussing robots replacing lawyers to practice law. In faux serious rhyme, Greg Gutfeld intoned: “Can a computer that’s self aware, keep you from the electric chair?” Sparking the conversation was the report that an artificial intelligence (AI) smartphone app was slated to assist a defendant fighting a parking ticket in a currently-undisclosed courtroom: Gigabytes of text could stream forth addressing the near infinite number of questions raised about robot lawyers. For now, let’s just explore the “robot lawyer” app built by DoNotPay. The company’s website declares: “The DoNotPay app is the home of the world’s first robot lawyer. Fight corporations, beat bureaucracy and sue anyone at the Read More ›
How San Francisco’s Gun Fears Prevented Lifesaving Innovation
Killer robots in law enforcement would reduce the death toll but they are a bridge too far for many politiciansIn November, 2022, San Francisco voted to allow police to deploy killer robots. Less than a month later, the city reversed their decision. Initially, in an 8-3 vote, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors allowed law enforcement to use robots “as a deadly force option when risk of loss of life to members of the public or officers is imminent and outweighs any other force option available to SFPD.” Sounds like reasonable policy, but protestors held up “NO KILLER ROBOTS!” signs at City Hall and the Board of Supervisors caved. This may be a case of hoplophobia, an irrational fear of firearms. So-called “killer robots” can deploy explosives to allow passage through blockaded doors or, in extreme situations, kill those who put innocent Read More ›
Can Animals Be Held Criminally Responsible for Their Acts?
While the idea is handled provocatively in philosophy literature, in practice, animals are envisioned as plaintiffs, not defendants, in animal rights casesIn an essay at Psyche, Ed Simon, a journalist who investigates the eclectic, looks at the history/mythology of trying animals like pigs and rats for criminal offenses. He sees an opportunity there for animal rights activism: Dismissing animal trials as just another backwards practice of a primitive time is to our intellectual detriment, not only because it imposes a pernicious presentism on the past, but also because it’s worth considering whether or not the broader implications of such a ritual don’t have something to tell us about different ways of understanding nonhuman consciousness, and the rights that our fellow creatures deserve. From our metaphysics, then, can come our ethics, and from our ethics can derive politics and law. There need Read More ›
Law: Doe vs. GitHub Is a Non-Crisis
Despite worrisome headlines in the media, Doe v. GitHub, Inc. would protect licensed software code without blocking AI systems from using internet data for “learning”Headline at The Verge: “The lawsuit that could rewrite the rules of AI copyright.” Wired similarly declares: “This Copyright Lawsuit Could Shape the Future of Generative AI.” The subtitle warns: “Algorithms that create art, text, and code are spreading fast — but legal challenges could throw a wrench in the works.” Indeed, two putative class action lawsuits were filed in the Northern District of California federal district court in November 2022 against GitHub, GitHub’s owner Microsoft, OpenAI and others. The lawsuits allege that two interrelated artificial intelligence (AI) software systems are continuously violating the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) as well as breaching contracts, engaging in unlawful competition, and violating California state privacy laws. Attorney and programmer Matthew Butterick Read More ›
Why Don’t Robots Have Rights? A Lawyer’s Response
Robots are hardware and software packages that lack a nature or any abilities outside of whatever their designers imagine“Free the Robots!” “Equal Rights for Robots!” Or maybe: “Set Us Robots Free!” Such future protest signs might well pop up in social media, to judge from “Why don’t robots have rights?” (Big Think, October 31, 2022) Writer Jonny Thomson worries that “ future generations will look back aghast at our behavior” when humans can “no longer exploit or mistreat advanced robots” as will presumably be the case in the 21st century. Dig into the article and get techno-whiplashed as Thomson suddenly starts talking about “the 22nd century [when robots] are our friends, colleagues, and gaming partners.” Thomson’s article considers robot rights as analogous to animal rights. The summary asserts: When discussing animal rights and welfare, we often reference two Read More ›
About Google’s Incognito Mode — Techies Think You’ve Been Had
A recent lawsuit revealed that users may think Google is not watching them but programmers know that it isWhen Incognito mode (“If you don’t want Google Chrome to remember your activity, you can browse the web privately in Incognito mode”) was challenged in court, programmers made some interesting admissions. While 56.3 percent of respondents surveyed in 2018 thought that Incognito “prevents Google from seeing their search history,” the reality is, according to techies, “Seriously, we all know private browsing modes don’t hide us from anything other than our spouse.” This is now blowing up: Google faces a potential privacy case as a class of millions of users filed to sue it for billions of dollars over Chrome’s Incognito mode lack of genuine privacy protections. While user ignorance is never a great argument in front of a judge, court Read More ›
Hawaiʻi’s Indefinite COVID Lockdown: How Would an AI Rule?
The governor of Hawaiʻi claimed that legislation supported his right to extend draconian COVID lockdown rules indefinitely. Here’s a test for an AI law programSome people say artificial intelligence (AI) systems can become more intelligent, more intellectually capable, than humankind. After all, they say the AI “AlphaZero has taught itself chess from scratch in just a few hours and then went on to beat the world’s previous best chess-playing computer program.” AI already reads x-rays, drives cars, orders meals by phone, diagnoses skin cancer, and predicts the next movie hit. Some say AI will soon do legal analysis and make judicial decisions more accurately and fairly than humans can. Using a recent true case, let’s overview what it takes to write AI software that would analyze a statute. First, as in an appellate court brief, let’s set up the real life problem and the Read More ›
California Law to Punish Doctors for “Misinformation” About COVID
One problem is that a term like “scientific consensus” simply doesn’t apply to discussion of the evidence collected during the pandemicAn article at MedPage Today supports the new California law against doctors providing “misinformation” about COVID-19: California Governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation on Friday that gives the state some ammunition against physicians who spread lies about COVID in the context of direct patient care, although it won’t apply to those who spread such misinformation on social media. It is said to be the first such law in the nation. Such misinformation — when it is “contradicted by contemporary scientific consensus contrary to the standard of care,” and delivered with “malicious intent or an intent to mislead” — now can be defined as “unprofessional conduct.” Cheryl Clark, “California Bill Barring Docs From Telling COVID Lies Signed Into Law” at MedPage Today Read More ›
Did the Court Really Say Bees Are Fish?
And would an AI-run court — which some propose — make a different decision? Not here because California law allows the interpretationSee headlines like: “Great Day” For Bumblebees as Californian Court Rules That They Are Fish and: Bees are fish, California court rules You’d believe, on reading them, that a California court recently ruled that bees are fish. Another eyeroll-worthy court decision! Readers here might muse, “An artificial intelligence-run legal system would never make such a crazy ruling!” The Seemingly Boring Narrow Issue Let’s skip past the exciting headlines. The California Court of Appeal in Almond Alliance of California v. Fish & Game Commission faced the issue of “whether the bumble bee, a terrestrial invertebrate, falls within the definition of fish, as that term is used in the definitions of endangered species, threatened species, and candidate species” under specific sections of Read More ›
The Computer Is Not an Idea Machine, It’s a Powerful Pencil
Robert J. Marks talks to Pastor Greg Young of Chosen Generation about his new book, Non-Computable YouRecently, Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks was a featured guest on Pastor Greg Young’s Chosen Generation Radio, in regard to his new book Non-Computable You: What You Do That Artificial Intelligence Never Will (Discovery Institute Press, 2022) . The nationally syndicated talk show on USA Radio networks, which can be found on stations including KTRB in San Francisco, KDIS in Little Rock, and KYAH in Delta, Utah. The topic turns to artificial intelligence and patents for inventions: Here he is with Dr. Marks, discussing artificial intelligence and patents. https://mindmatters.ai/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/09/Mind-Matters-205-Robert-J-Marks.mp3 (The discussion started out with talk of beards.) Pastor Greg Young: Well, one thing that AI doesn’t have is beards. Robert J. Marks: They don’t have beards, among a Read More ›
The Courts: May Social Media Censor Speech and Ban Users?
Two federal appeals courts came down on opposite sides. Hear the storyMay Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube censor your posts and ban you from using their social media platforms? May a state government require large social media platforms to allow users and posts to present lawful information, ideas, and viewpoints with which the platforms disagree? Florida and Texas both enacted laws to restrict platforms from censoring and banning users whose content the platforms disliked. Two different federal appeals courts in 2022 ruled on whether these two states’ laws were constitutional — and came out on opposite sides. The following three scenarios frame the key issues. Scenario A: Commercial Ground Transportation A fellow boards a private company-owned, regularly scheduled commercial bus bound for Berkeley, California, wearing a T-shirt proclaiming in big letters: Save Read More ›