Free speech rights ‘for
computers’—in all their glory and with all their limitations—are
fundamentally derived from human activity, warts and all.
That breakthrough film raised the startling specter of sentient machines capable of speaking intelligently and outwitting their masters—at least until their plugs are pulled.
Even in 2012, we’re still quite distant from the world of 2001, but computer speech has emerged as a fascinating new issue at the intersection of law, technology, and politics. As more and more commercial functions and decisions become automated, a discussion has been taking place among legal and policy whizzes about whether and how to regulate and respect machine “speech.”
In a recent New York Times op-ed, Columbia Law School professor Tim Wu provocatively asked: “Do machines speak? If so, do they have a constitutional right to free speech?”
Wu’s questions seemingly answer themselves. Constitutional rights, as everyone knows, apply only to humans, not to animals, cyborgs, or computers—don’t they?
But Wu is getting at something a bit more subtle:
