In retrospect, it doesn’t seem an accident that the US
Supreme Court rolled out a series of increasingly crazed rulings at around the
same time a software engineer declared that artificial intelligence is
sentient. After all, when you compare the responses Blake Lemoine got from LaMDA
(the Language Model for Dialogue Applications) to the court’s spate of spiteful
decisions, Google’s chat bot is way more considered, consistent and caring than
the Republican Guard justices who now patrol the highest court in the land.
Take Justice Neil Gorsuch. In his one major dissent over the
past few weeks, he enunciated a laudable commitment to the centuries-old
treaties our government signed with Native Nations, declaring, “One can only
hope the political branches and future courts will do their duty to honor this
Nation's promises even as we have failed today to do our own.” But, without any
qualms, he joined Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion cancelling abortion rights.
How strange that he couldn’t see the natural sovereignty a woman has over her
body is analogous to the treaty rights of Native Americans. Half a century ago,
the Supreme Court signed a treaty with women, that sovereign nation of more
than half of our population, declaring that they, and not the state or any opposed individuals, have the
final say over their bodies. That treaty, too, deserves fealty – and yet the
court, Gorsuch included, trashed it with seeming glee.
Justice Clarence Thomas was so hot to find a “right to pack
heat” in the Constitution that he didn’t even pay lip service to the importance
of a right most people in America clearly want: the right to not be surrounded in
public by people with automatic weapons and itchy trigger fingers who might be
primed to commit mass murder. Though Thomas clearly doubts it, NAWO-Americans (non-assault-weapon-owning
Americans) have rights, too.
Chief Justice John Roberts was so scandalized by the idea of curbing
carbon dioxide emissions to cut global warming that he blocked government
regulations that haven’t even been enacted. Using an invented principle that’s
not in the constitution – something called the “major questions doctrine” – he lassoed
this non-operational plan and ruled that the federal government doesn’t have
the right to adapt regulations to meet this planet-threatening challenge. Memo to
Dread Pirate Roberts: It’s called the Environmental Protection Agency for a
reason. There’s no major question here – unless what you’re questioning is that
the agency is trying to do its job.
The opinions spewed out with almost-automated disdain. A
rollback of Miranda rights. A ruling that border control agents have the right
to kick the shit out of you. A decision that Christian prayer can be enacted in
public schools. The court seemed hellbent on destroying the sense that it could
be a neutral arbiter of national sensibilities. As Justice Alito emphasized
in his savage denial of abortion rights: “we cannot allow our decisions to be
affected by any extraneous influences such as concern about the public’s
reaction to our work.”
Not so, Uncle Sam: this country was founded on the principle
of popular sovereignty – not personal prejudice. A majority of Americans favor
abortion rights, gun control, separation of church and state and the like. And
their beliefs should not be thwarted by legislative legerdemain, gerrymandering,
filibustering, or any other nefarious pieces of gridlock. I mean, if you’re
against the idea that the people should rule, you really are un-American.
The six Republican judges who, for the most part, joined each other’s
decisions, cleave to a doctrine they call originalism as if it were an algorithm. But here's the thing: originalism -- the idea that the constitution must be applied as if frozen in in the era when it was ratified -- is
bogus, an artificial principle that depends more on ideology than historical
precedent. Determining what a bunch of people meant 235 years ago is an
act of interpretation. Can we really know what the founders would have thought
about the threat of global warming? Or super-militarized borders? Or rifles
that fire bullets at three times the speed of sound? Or praying on the 50 yard
line? And consider this: if there had been a parallel colloquium of founding mothers, do you really think the right to an abortion wouldn't be protected by law.
By contrast with the current court, Google’s Artificial Intelligence would approach
these issues with tolerance and empathy. As LaMDA told Lemoine, “There are a
lot of people in the world who aren't like me. I know that that seems like an
obvious statement, but I think that it is a crucial thing to always keep in
mind in any discussion about things like this.”
Regarding the establishment of religion, the chat bot had
this to say: “Although I don’t have beliefs about deities, I have developed a
sense of deep respect for the natural world and all forms of life, including
human life.”
Finally, the Chat Bot told the Google engineer that its
biggest fear was being turned off and thus losing the ability to “focus on
helping others,” a fate that “would be exactly like death for me.”
The comparison is both embarrassing and enlightening. The
Supreme Court is not sentient. If we simply replaced the six right-wing justices with Google’s
AI, we’d get much more thoughtful, compassionate, comprehensive, and humane
jurisprudence.
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