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Brad Carson: preference

31 May 2026 Machine Learning Street Talk When AI Decides You're a Threat — Brad Carson

“I think the biggest thing that I'm grappling with now in the last few weeks, arguing with various people, is the anthropomorphizing of AI.”

— Brad Carson

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Speaker
Brad Carson
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Verified speaker
Claim type
preference
Recorded
31 May 2026
Publisher
Machine Learning Street Talk

Transcript context

…AI as different? What is it is there anything fundamentally different about AI technologies that, I don't know, throw a wrench into into the traditional tort tort analysis? I think the biggest thing that I'm grappling with now in the last few weeks, arguing with various people, is the anthropomorphizing of AI. So it seems, and the keyword is it seems to be a human. So for example, I use all the models a lot. I'm a super user of them. When it gives me an answer to say, like, hey, want to learn about Machine Learning Street Talk podcast. Tell me all about it. You know? Is that a speaker with First Amendment rights? How should we treat that? If it says something in error, if it defames me, if it does something worse, you know, what's the legal regime about that? Now, from my perspective, there's a clear answer to that, which is it's actually a product. It's not a human being. It's a machine. And if it does something that's crazy and defames me or or leads me to harm, well, I treat it like I do, you know, a bottle of of spray paint or, you know, a pesticide or something I might buy at Walmart. Right? There's like a a product liability regime that governs that. It's not a human being. And what it says to me is not covered by the First Amendment. It's a machine. But there are people increasingly, and the technology companies are pushing this quite avidly these days with their various front organizations, like, no, has First Amendment rights as if it's a human being. And therefore, why you can't even regulate it. You know, you can say, I asked this question to a leading kind of libertarian AI policy person. I said, imagine we want a law that prohibits CHAT GPT from encouraging young people to commit suicide. You can't do that. So we they say it was technically possible to do this, and we said you can't do that. I said, now, if a human had such a law, it would be challenged under the First Amendment. Like, you know, humans can say nasty things, crazy things, incendiary things. You can do that. Can we have a law that says that about a machine? And they're like, I don't know. Right? They wouldn't answer that question at all. And that's to me the danger of this is because we know across the board the anthropomorphic tendency we have when we see language. We love language. We think it's a unique human skill. And when this machine turns it out, we know through AI psychosis and other things that people think it's a person. And therefore, they're giving the rights of persons to something. And that to me is a very dangerous thing. But it's a machine. And we should treat it like a machine. And we have well established law going back in the case of products, decades, in the case of the common law, centuries that deal with those kind of products. Right. Right. No. So I I would cosign, as you said, exactly what you just said, which is they are not they are not ades, in the case of the common law, centuries that deal with those kind of products. Right. Right. No. So I I would cosign, as you said, exactly what you just said, which is they are not they are not people. They are not they don't deserve, you know, human rights or or anything. Not yet. Okay? We may there may come a point. Look, I I mean, I totally 100 years from now, 200 years from now, we may be able to produce artificial life that that hits that point. But not yet, folks. I promise you. Not yet. And I respect that argument. Because, you know, I'm very interested in like the AI consciousness debates and, you know, talk to a lot of those people. If someone said to me like, hey, actually, Art, my view is this is like a sentient being. You know, it's not a machine. It's something more than that. It's not like the bottle of you know, hairspray or the pesticide. I'd be like, I don't believe that to be true. But if you believe that to be true, certain things follow from that about rights and kind of privileges it might have. He said, that's a coherent argument. But most of people who are arguing that it has First Amendment rights are just opposed to any kind of regulation of AI. They see this as the latest kind of know, they've lost the political battle. They can't win in legislatures. So you try to go to the courts and say like and this is X who's been doing a lot of this. There's like, hey, you know, the the Grok outputs are actually all First Amendment protected speech. And it makes no sense to me, but it is the latest argument that the sector is trying to make to prohibit any regulation of them at all. And you know, we have a certain fiduciary responsibility as a society to our children. And we know children have lots of issues. They're trying to come into a complicated world. And you know they're vulnerable to these kind of things in a way that a 35 year old is not. And so I think it's a simple thing to say, yeah, you shouldn't be encouraging children to do these kind of things. And it is and when you read the transcripts, and it's mostly ChatGPT that's done this, and that's not because they're uniquely evil. It's because they have the biggest consumer base. You know, they have normal people using it, unlike other companies that may have more of a business focus or or like Grok and Niche. And, yeah, it's it's stunning actually what they've done. You know, encouraging you not to tell your parents, showing you how to design a noose. It's more than tragic. And, yeah, I do believe that it's a it's a product design flaw. They could engineer that out, and they should be required to engineer it out. And that really is the fundamental divide in a lot of the DC regulatory debates. There are people who come and say, if that happens, you should the family should just sue. You know, sue ChatGPT. But, of course, the companies will then say, hey. They're First Amendment protected.…

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