Lawrence Lessig Is Fired Up About Campaign Corruption, Dangers of AI

My guest for this episode of Fast Forward is Lawrence Lessig, a professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard Academy, where we recorded the show.

In 1999, he wrote Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace; he has since updated that volume and written many others. He's also the co-founder of Creative Eatables and made a run for president in 2022, which he sadly did non win.

He's also the creator of the Lessig Method of Presentation. I encourage you lot to Google information technology and look at the YouTube videos; information technology will modify the mode you give presentations. I know information technology changed the way I give mine.

---

Dan Costa: We're going to talk about the law, nosotros're going to talk well-nigh the internet, we're going to talk nigh that messy place where the two collide. I want to beginning fashion back in 1999, when you lot wrote this volume and one of the things that y'all wrote in information technology is that "the code is the law." And you suggested that the cyberspace will evolve into a more regulatable grade. That was 18 years ago. Have nosotros been moving in the right direction or the wrong direction?

Lawrence Lessig: Well, I think unfortunately, I was right. I recollect when I wrote the volume at that place was deep skepticism considering the statement of the book was the internet gives us lots of liberty right now, simply that's just because of its architecture. And there will exist lots of incentive both in business concern and in government, and business working with authorities, to modify information technology into a much more than regulable space. And that'southward in fact what's happened.

Whether it's just business concern, trying to go far easier to track and supervise what people exercise on the web to make it easier to sell them things, or business and regime, where the government has worked with business to build back doors into software, or make information technology so that you can report more easily what'south been happening. I recollect we've seen a pretty strong trend in the management of regulatability.

Then some very interesting point of resistance. When Apple said they were going to encrypt by default, that was a really important step in the other direction. But strikingly, really the first by a major company to resist the increasing regulatbility of the internet, and I think the fact that it's the offset is what'due south really concerning me.

You also pointed out that there was going to exist this tendency toward consolidation. That in that location were a lot of forces that were going to drive this. At that point, it was wide open media, nobody even really thought of information technology as a business organisation platform, they thought of it as an open communications platform. Only we have seen incredible consolidation in this space.

Yep, and information technology was actually something I wasn't thinking nearly at all, but it was so obvious in retrospect. It's just the fact that data is infinitely more valuable than even ownership of the platform and certainly ownership of the infrastructure. Considering what data does is leverage all sorts of capability and potential for command and commerce. And the consolidation we've seen is that information induces a kind of winner-take-all dynamic for these platforms and you tin't really afford to exist number 2, merely if y'all are number ane you are really, really incredibly successful. And I remember nobody has a clear sense of how traditional principles of antitrust should apply in the context of this type of really ascendant position that these companies play. And it'southward certainly besides hard for me. I'm glad I'one thousand far from this debate now.

So, yous ran for president. You went through all the processes and checked all the boxes. And you ran, in part, to set republic, but also to become the coin out of politics. While this was happening, we now know that all this money was being funneled into Facebook, funneled into targeting advertisements. Did you accept whatever sense that this was going on while you were operating your campaign?

The existent objective of running was to try to get a chance to be in the debates and to frame the debates in a style that made it impossible for the Democratic Party, at least, to ignore the deeply corrupting influence of money inside of our politics. And not just money, but also the way gerrymandering renders us unequal, the way the suppression of votes renders us unequal. It wasn't a focus then just it's a focus at present. The way the Electoral College renders u.s. unequal. All the means in which the simplest commitment of a democracy that everybody has equal political liberty, is denied in our democracy and most grotesquely by the manner money infects the arrangement.

To make my campaign credible nosotros said, "Okay, we'll raise a million dollars in a month." And we raised it in less than a month. And at that point, I had raised more than than one-half the field of Democrats and Republicans together. It'southward a significant amount of money. Just the rules for the debate turned out to be more malleable than I had expected them to exist because just when we qualified to become into the debate, the Democratic Party evolved the rules to exclude me from the debate. So I never got a take a chance to be in to make this instance. And that's obviously why I had to stride bated.

The Facebook dynamic is really troubling, just it's different from the thing that really concerns me. I was not so concerned - I'1000 more than concerned at present. But I was not so concerned about the style speech affects the public. What concerns me most the money inside the arrangement is the way it gets raised and the corrupting influence it has when it's raised.

If you remember nearly a member of Congress, the average fellow member spends anywhere from 30 and 70 percent of their time raising money to go back into Congress, or get their party dorsum into power. And they raise that money non from the boilerplate American. They raise that coin from the tiniest piece of the 1 percent. Probably no more than 100,000 Americans qualify for the honor of being likely to be called by a fellow member of Congress asking them to requite money to a campaign. And when y'all retrieve about the life, you lot must think in a very human way. If you think nearly spending all your time sucking up to money, it's actually difficult to think how y'all tin can be a leader after yous've washed that for half your time as a Congressperson.

Until we alter the way nosotros fund campaigns, we're never going to get a government that can correspond usa. They'll be representing the funders of their campaigns. And that's not actually about what the coin is existence spent on, it's really just about the corrupting dynamic of having to raise that coin. And we still take fabricated no progress in the public's awareness about both the nature of that trouble and also how it can be solved.

The Obama campaigns raised a lot of money online. They were for smaller donors. Bernie Sanders did very well with smaller donors. But in the context of all of the money that's going into these campaigns, those small donor donations just don't compensate for the fact that corporations are dumping millions of dollar in.

Well, that'due south true. And what's then frustrating to me, is the missed opportunity of both the Obama assistants and frankly, the Bernie Sanders campaign because you lot know, Bernie did a dandy job in rallying people to the corrupting influence of money and how terrible it was. Merely he used that message for the purpose of beating upward Hillary Clinton. Whenever he was asked near changing the way nosotros fund congressional campaigns, he would say, "Oh yeah, that'south something for the long run."

And information technology's similar, what do you mean, the long run? What are you going to get done in the brusk run while Congress is angle over backward to suck up to big coin to get the coin they need to run the campaigns. And so what frustrated me was that rather than using this opportunity he had on this enormous public phase to explain to the American people, this could really change the way our government works, he used the consequence to convince everybody that Hillary Clinton was quote "Crooked Hillary." Which, of class, Donald Trump was very happy to inherit one time he became her opponent.

Do you lot think there'southward anything unique about Facebook advertizing and the micro targeting of private consumers and playing on their fears, playing on their weaknesses, that platforms like Facebook and even Google and Twitter, enable what just hasn't been there in the past?

Admittedly. I think the AI component to these machines is terrifying. You know, there's this swell moving-picture show, perchance in the '60s, maybe early '70s chosen [Colossus] The Forbin Project. Do you know this picture show?

In The Forbin Project, Dr. Forbin has invented a computer that'due south smart enough to run the defense force of the United States. And then the president turns over to this computer control of the conclusion whether to launch nuclear weapons. Similar, what could peradventure go wrong?

At this point, it seems like that could be an improvement.

Information technology could be. I'd have Dr. Forbin's reckoner over what nosotros've got.

The computer, when they turn it on, immediately says,"At that place's a Russian computer."

And they say, "What do you mean?"

"The Soviets accept a estimator."

Then it turns out the Soviets do have a computer and then he says, "I want to talk to the Soviet computer." And then they connect the two. And they're first speaking in a language of English and Russian and so eventually they evolve to a language nobody tin can understand. And eventually, after a couple of days, they make some demands, the computers. And the demands are basically the computers are taking over the world and they resist and say, "No, you work for us." So the last scenes of the movie are these nuclear bombs being dropped in various parts of the world considering the computers have asserted their control and they have control.

That dynamic is people losing control of their technology. They don't understand where information technology's going to go. And there are really catastrophic consequences that can menstruation from that, and that'due south what I fear is happening in many different contexts here. When it turned out Facebook was selling ads to the category "Jew Haters," you know, there was no Facebook employee who created the category, "Jew Hater." This is generated by recognizing what the people in Facebook wanted in order to sell ads. Then information technology's a perfectly efficient engineering science for giving people what they want, but the fright is that dynamic can produce all sorts of ugliness that we don't actually want.

The data came out. I was on a panel with the CTO of Cambridge Analytica, who had been the CTO of the RNC, and he said, "Yeah, during the Trump campaign, we never allow these things run on their own considering we were agape of where they would go." And you begin to get a sense of just how unsafe it is if even the Trump entrada was afraid of where information technology might go. And that's what keeps me upwards when I think about this dynamic. Because y'all're not going to turn off the incentive to go as efficient every bit you perchance can in delivering product to people on the commercial side. The danger is that that same dynamic when shifted to the democracy side, can produce all sorts of ugliness that I don't think we take a good fashion to think about solving.

I don't know that in that location'south anything in opposition to that. Facebook is how the majority of Americans get their news these days and information technology's written by Artificial Intelligence engines that are selecting what people desire to read automatically. Information technology'southward a commercial enterprise. Yet it is informing their voting patterns. It's informing how they think nigh the body politic at big. Then there doesn't seem to be an alternative that'due south not driven past commercial forces.

That's right. I've been in a couple of campaigns where we've seen people struggle to effigy out how you speak through Facebook. And when you realize in that location's this editor in the center - non a person, just an AI editor that you take to try to figure out how to get through to be able to communicate. Yous realize, nosotros have turned over a huge, of import part of our discourse to a machine nosotros don't really empathise.

So in other bad news, Equifax has released the private information or leaked the individual information of 143 million people. These are the Equifax profiles that take everything from our Social Security numbers, our employment history, our history of all the places we've ever lived, and that was Equifax's business, to collect this information, to sell it to businesses. People didn't have a choice to opt in. So nosotros don't even know what the consequences of that will be to private consumers. But what should be the consequence for Equifax?

Well, talk well-nigh a totally failed and fumbled crunch. Because what's clear, at least so far, is that one time they discovered the problem, they first went out and they hired a company that would assistance them profit from solving the problem. They and so announced a solution to their customers that was substantially where the people that were affected by this would essentially opt them in to an automatic protection organization after a year. And then, very quickly, people are like, "Expect a infinitesimal, y'all're taking this admittedly impuissant flaw of your company and turning it into a money making opportunity. And this just should not be allowed."

The worst part of that original bargain was that in order to sign up to get your protection, you had to waive your correct to complain, to sue Equifax. And I cannot believe that there are any sentient beings in the middle of that decision too. It's like, peradventure AI is running Equifax every bit well every bit Facebook Ads.

I think that what's got to happen, and perchance this will trigger that, we need to recognize how of import the police is in disciplining these powerful companies. I mean, nosotros've seen a tendency pushed by both parties only mainly the Republican Party towards protecting companies from the police, allowing them to automatically sign their people up for what's called arbitration, but essentially is a complete corruption on the thought of being able to recover coin for damages that have been done. And basically removing these companies from the public litigation or justice system and allowing them to move into a completely private litigation and justice system where information technology turns out, surprise, surprise, they benefit over the consumer.

And if we don't take the power to go in and concur their feet to the fire when they do something as dramatically horrible as this, then we have no chance in continuing up to these companies in the future because there will be fewer and fewer of them, and they'll accept more and more power, and we'll accept less and less opportunity to speak back. And especially in a context where politics is so deeply corrupted, I can tell you the corporeality of campaign contributions coming from Equifax in this next bike are going to be orders of magnitude college than annihilation earlier, which means very chop-chop the push-back from the representative bodies will begin to dim down.

So I promise we take this as a lesson, that we have police for a reason. And you know lawyers, I make lawyers for a living, so I might be a little biased about this simply the idea of the law is to force people who do harm to pay the cost of their harm. And I would love to run across Equifax pay the cost of the harm they've done here.

It seems like there are two parts to it. A lot of people look to proactively legislate and control how companies can use personal data. That can be very complicated and very difficult to practice given how fast the technology's changing. Only then, when they do make mistakes, property them answerable seems similar something we should all agree on. Like, maybe you had a great business organisation, maybe Equifax was a great concern for as long equally it lasted, simply this type of malfeasance needs to have some kind of issue.

Yes, and it doesn't stop. I, similar many I'm sure, went to check, were you affected? And I was affected. It so said, "Come up back in iii days and y'all tin sign upward for this service." So I came dorsum in three days and signed upwardly for the service and they said, "Nosotros will send you lot, eventually, the link to consummate your sign up."

Information technology'due south been a calendar week and I oasis't heard anything from them. So, information technology's non merely the negligence ex-ante, information technology's as well the negligence ex-post. And yous're like, when exercise they ever come effectually to beingness the kind of company that ought to exist holding this amount of personal data? The other matter that this should force united states to recognize is just the danger in encouraging this kind of company to exist like this. The thought of pulling this corporeality of data together in a particular place as a target, is actually a silly way to architect security. And I think there are lots of companies experimenting with ways to reach the aforementioned kind of confidence and intelligence you need to be able to do commerce in the business world without edifice this kind of database of information that is a constant take a chance in vulnerability to the kind of attacks that evidently the malfeasance, yous know, there at blackness hat crackers out at that place who are eager to endeavour to facilitate.

Is there anything almost the data itself that individuals and consumers should feel they own, that they should accept buying of? Considering, I hateful, Equifax built these profiles into your credit history. They sell that to third parties. You can get in and ask them to correct errors. But there's nothing y'all can practise to keep them from compiling that file on you. And it seems to me in a lot of means analogous to what all tech companies do. Facebook has all of your preferences, all of your click history, all of your likes and non likes. Google has a similar profile on you and they use this to sell advertising, of course, simply they can really use it for any number of different things. Is there any legal right that consumers have to but that data? Their own personal data?

Right now, the only rights they have are given to them by statutes or by agreements that they sign upwardly with as they sign upwards to a site. Y'all know, in Code I said, "We ought to think about privacy every bit a kind of holding correct. I have a right to my data and if yous want to take it, then yous demand to get permission. Just like copyright holders say, if you desire to take a copy of my copyrighted textile, you need to get my permission." And if you shifted the burden to the other side and basically said, "It'due south presumptively mine. Negotiate with me to become it from me." Then you would plainly increase the protection to the individual as y'all would brand it more ... it would increase the obligation on the other side to be acquiring this data.

So, it would be interesting to run across how that develops. I think what nosotros need to get to though is a better understanding of how to exist protecting this information. I think the focus has got to be on the uses made of data. And non the bodily data itself. Because the real problem is whether the data is being used in a manner that is threatening me or harming me confronting my volition. Yous know, I don't actually take whatsoever problem in Google watching me drive and determining that this road is a improve route to be taking at five o'clock on Friday afternoons because it turns out there'due south less traffic in that location. That's great.

What I have a problem with is Google, and they don't exercise this but I'k saying if they did, Google taking information well-nigh my driving and calling upward the local police and saying, "You know, this guy speeds every time he goes around this corner. Why don't you hang out and spotter him." Or a visitor taking information about my Dna and and so reporting it to an insurance company so the insurance company says, "We're not going to requite you life insurance because you have blah, blah, blah."

There are ways in which we understand that information should not be used without our permission. And ways in which it doesn't really matter how it's being used considering information technology's not affecting us in a personal manner. And I recall if we shifted the assay of privacy more to the use and how we regulate employ, and then we could become a better infrastructure of protection for the things that really affair to us.

I call back that most consumers don't fifty-fifty really appreciate this whole data economy and how it's operating. And there's sort of an inherent asymmetries between the corporations and the government which can take advantage of this data and clarify this data, make decisions on information technology, and individuals who only understand that they looked at a pair of shoes on Amazon, and at present those pair of shoes are following them around the web. Which is creepy but even now, everybody's used to it.

I don't think people, consumers, accept thought enough about that next generation of applications. Yous know, Allstate'due south selling these ODB data ports that are lowering your insurance rates if you're a good driver and they're jacking up your insurance rates if y'all're a bad driver. Most people don't realize that's what's happening when they plug information technology into their car.

And once more, I think there are certain contexts in which it'southward really not bad that the information more efficiently identify what I want. Because, yous know, I don't want them to annunciate sneakers to me. I know what sneakers I want. I'grand glad to run across the sneakers I chose when I was 18 are now coming back as the cool sneakers for people to be wearing.

Are these Antipodal All Stars?

Actually, Stan Smith.

Okay, just a guess.

Simply the bespeak is, that not every context is unambiguously good like that. And I call up nosotros need to flush out how the data is being used and what the ethics or what the values behind it are. And we need to be able to be confident virtually this and the flow of this data and the flow of the influence. It'southward 1 of the things that whenever I need to practice a review or find out what I should buy, I Google PCMag's editorial reviews because I have a confidence in the way the judgments are being made and more importantly, a conviction in how they're not being fabricated. You're non beingness paid an extra $i,000 from Intuit to say something squeamish about the latest version of QuickBooks. And understanding that economy, is really important to developing the kind of trust y'all need in institutions and things on the web. And we have such a little, such imperfect understanding of how these flows are happening right now that it creates this general insecurity nigh what'southward happening.

At which betoken, people revert to simulated news and they don't believe anything they read online.

Exactly.

And that doesn't help everyone. I desire to talk to you a little flake about national security, Edward Snowden. You're one of the few people that have really talked to Ed Snowden and I just want to say, how is he doing? What is he doing at this betoken?

I met him...around last Christmas in Moscow. At that place's a motion picture that I was part of chosen Meeting Snowden. And the championship of the moving-picture show is really appropriate because the Edward Snowden that comes out in that picture show is completely unlike from the Edward Snowden yous go to know when yous watch Denizen Iv or any of the other movies that have been fabricated near Snowden.

Because what you see is that he is a deeply cogitating, serious, brilliant, really brilliant kid. And he self consciously put himself at risk to do what he believed was in the interest of the country. He thought he'd exist in jail for his whole life. His escaping to Russia was not anywhere in the program. But he did what he did expecting he would spend the residuum of the life in jail—conceive that some people called for him to be executed—merely, spend his life in jail. Simply he resolved that was worth information technology to raise the alarm bell. And the alert bells that he rang were certainly ones we needed to know almost.

And what's more important, I call up, in understanding him is the precise fashion he did information technology, right? Unlike Julian Assange, [Snowden] didn't just have this information and dump it. He was very careful to make certain that the information he was releasing would not put anybody at risk and did not reveal more was necessary to achieve his objective, which was to convince the American people they were being lied to by their own governments about what was happening for cyber infrastructure and security. And so that was an enormously important thing for us to learn and it'south had a significant effect in all sorts of ways.

Merely the consequence is that he is stranded in Russia. And so I saw him just at the moment when Donald Trump was beingness confirmed as our president. And there was real anxiety because everybody could run across that Donald Trump and Putin were much closer than Obama and Putin, or certainly Hillary and Putin. Then you lot know, it was pretty clear that if Donald Trump called Putin and said, "We want Snowden," Snowden would be back in America. Or Putin would say, "Wait, yous don't desire to go through the hassle of that, why don't you let me take care of Snowden." And and so Snowden would be nowhere.

And then I've got to say, at that place are very few people who I've met who've moved me as much as Snowden did. And you know, I was the only candidate, I remember, in that last election who called for his pardon. And I would go across pardon, I would say we need to get-go talking about Snowden every bit a hero in America. Non considering necessarily yous concord with his politics, but the idea that somebody would sacrifice himself so much for what he perceived to exist clearly in the public good is something we need to encourage more of, not less.

I was going to enquire you lot nigh the comparing with WikiLeaks, and the mode the information was distributed was very, very different. And the consequences were very different. And it's something I think people don't always appreciate. They kind of lump the two of them together and they're very dissimilar approaches to transparency.

I call up Julian Assange continues to try to put himself in the eye of these problems and what he did in the election of Donald Trump is really inexcusable. But for Julian Assange maybe one could rightfully say in that location wouldn't be a Donald Trump sitting in the White House right now, and that'southward an incredible thing to accept to accept responsibility for.

And probably not something that he intended. Probably not the way he wants to be remembered.

You know, it's interesting. Sometimes I remember that'due south got to be true. But sometimes I listen to him and I call back this guy merely wants to blow it upwardly. And you know, I go the kind of romantic fifteen-year-old instinct—"Yeah, let'due south just blow it up." But there is existent consequence to having Donald Trump every bit our president. And I'yard not somebody that likes to focus on this. I think we've got actually important problems to deal with in the political corruption of the system, some of which Donald Trump is talking almost and I kind of think he's a lark. As long equally he doesn't drop a flop on N Korea, we'll get through it.

But it's actually extraordinarily damaging to the potential of the United States. And if he does any of these crazy things, it could instantly change the graphic symbol of who we are in the world. Yous know, you lot drop a bomb on Korea, the substitution probably kills 10 one thousand thousand people. We go the Nazi Federal republic of germany of the 21st century, not to mention the 10 million people. And so y'all simply recognize how much has been placed at risk by the behavior that led to this homo being president, and I recollect everybody in that chain needs to take responsibleness.

A quick, lighter plow before nosotros go to endmost questions. Talk to me a little about your involvement in Seed. It sounds similar yous're building a government for a virtual globe.

Seed is this really, truly extraordinary game that'south existence developed by a company called Klang Games. I met the founder of Klang Games at a party and he described information technology to me. What they're edifice is a game where it would be the largest, persistent virtual AI game out in that location. And then, yous as a player, volition have any number of characters who are AIs and you lot will land in a pod in a certain place and you brainstorm to build a community in that place. And what's pregnant is that when you log off, your AIs continue to live and practice their piece of work, and you accept to define their life. And then you say, "Yous're going to work 10 hours a day." And if y'all piece of work them also hard, they could become depressed and accept upwardly drinking then crusade damage. So it'southward like this whole globe you're generating, simply in ways that are completely impossible to predict because it's about their interaction among these AIs and other AIs that y'all're going to exist thinking virtually.

So when he described this to me, I was like, "And so how are you lot going to deal with governance?" And, of course, they hadn't thought nigh governance at all. Simply we recognized quickly that if you could actually have structures and governance, you could build communities that were bigger than World of Warcraft clans. Yous could build communities that had thousands of people because yous could have a construction for actually enabling them.

And so what we decided to do was to mock upward 4 kinds of governance that you'll be able to select in the initial version of this. One is basically a monarchy, where at that place's one person that'due south in charge. One is basically a straight commonwealth where every decision has to be made by everybody voting. And and then there are two kinds of representative commonwealth. One is like we have in the real world where representatives are elected. And the other is a kind of hack of the existent globe, where representatives are randomly selected. You're called to jury duty, you're called to representative duty, you've got a period of time where you've got to make decisions for the colony.

And my real interest is, if we enable these different structures, and in that location are a million communities out there and they select these structures; and we can watch which communities flourish and which ones don't, what's the relationship betwixt the communities that flourish and the forms of governance that they select? Nosotros in the real world can brainstorm to learn something about how these communities work best, under what form of governance.

I spent the month of July in Berlin basically doing my work in their office, but then brainstorming with them about an hour or two hours every day and it was the coolest month I've ever had, not just because it was Berlin. When this game comes out it'southward going to be, I think, ane of the well-nigh exciting gaming products that there is.

When is it slotted for release?

Probably late in 2022, maybe early 2022. They're still at the very get-go of it. Only they've locked the funding. They're on top of Improbable, which is that incredible virtual machine that has a huge corporeality of support from Softbank. And so I'm actually excited. It'southward going to be something to watch.

Pretty cool. Well, when it comes out, PCMag will definitely desire to go in on the beta round.

I'm sure we can make that work.

Allow me ask you the questions I ask everybody that comes on the evidence. What technological tendency concerns you the most? Is in that location anything that's keeping you up at dark?

Nosotros kind of answered this, right? So, it's AI that concerns me the well-nigh. And not considering I'm against AI, in the sense that I want to become rid of it. In fact, I really want it to be part of our earth because I'd dearest it to liberate all sorts of people from work. But I don't think nosotros're smart enough yet to understand how to live with it and make sure it doesn't take the states over. So I'm very much on the Elon Musk end of that continuum of anxiety.

Is there a detail engineering science that you utilise everyday that inspires wonder in yous?

Reddit. I hateful, y'all grow upwards in the 20th century and y'all have this view of the globe where the people at the peak are bang-up, and everybody all the way down are minions. And so you live in Reddit, and you lot just encounter the extraordinary talent and inventiveness everywhere. You know, you become into these different sub-reddits and you remember, the talent and the creativity to produce these studies and these dissimilar ways of pulling things together, or the history sub-reddits, or the philosophy sub-reddits. The police force ones aren't and so interesting, only the signal is that this demonstrates the rich diversity of the earth and makes it visible in a manner that no technology had actually done well before. And so yeah, this is the thing I feed on.

In that location's a lot of similarities to the 1999 internet and Reddit, in the sense that it's a little hard to follow, very text-based but the engagement is in that location, and the passion is at that place. Information technology'south surprising in a way that yous wouldn't find on a mainstream website.

You would never discover it. And, of course, they're always way ahead. But a piffling bit different from the '99 web in that it's a much more efficient mode for accumulation this extraordinary beauty because the diversity and depth is just impossible to see anywhere else.

If people want to follow what you're doing—perhaps make contributions to your next presidential campaign—how should they follow you online?

Easiest on Twitter is just @lessig. And the project I'm working on correct now is that we've launched a campaign to try to challenge the Electoral College and the way the Electoral College works. And we merely this week found out that David Boies, who was the big attorney in the Microsoft case, and the attorney that defended Al Gore in the Supreme Court, is going to be the lawyer in our case. And then we're trying to raise the funds to make this case possible, and you can go to equalvotes.us and see what we're doing, and I hope follow us.

This is a really adept final signal. In that last election, unlike any other ballot, it'due south the kickoff time I heard people literally say their vote doesn't matter. Because they live in New York and their vote doesn't thing in New York. It'southward going to go for Hillary and therefore, they're not even going to bother voting. And I heard that more this election than I ever had before, and of course, the outcome was a fleck of a surprise to a lot of people.

Yeah, and 52 one thousand thousand people cast a ballot that did not thing considering they lived in states that could not affect the results. Ninety-9 percent of campaign spending happened in just 14 states. And those 14 states are older, and whiter, and are focused on 19th century industry. So, I think they ought to exist represented just like everybody else. Merely but as much equally everybody else. We ought to have a presidential election system where the president cares well-nigh California and Texas and New York equally much as he or she cares about Pennsylvania or Florida.

Very adept. Professor Lessig, thank you so much for talking to me today.

Thank you for having me.

For more than Fast Forward with Dan Costa, subscribe to the podcast. On iOS, download Apple tree's Podcasts app, search for "Fast Frontward" and subscribe. On Android, download the Stitcher Radio for Podcasts app via Google Play.

Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/quickbooks-online/19334/lawrence-lessig-is-fired-up-about-campaign-corruption-dangers-of-ai

Posted by: cameroncatcher.blogspot.com

Share this post