Open Question March 11: Free Speech, but who draws the lines?
Free speech rules and culture today have a huge impact on the future:
Tech companies + algorithms determine who gets heard in 'public'... so government vs citizen doesn't touch today's real power struggles
AI: when you can clone anyone’s voice or face, what’s protected and what’s harm?
Political shifts: old arguments on who's defending or restricting speech (and why) don't hold, making it a topic where fresh thinking actually matters. Eg: The political left (eg ACLU defending neo-Nazis' right to march) used to be standard bearers, where now, the left is more likely to argue that unregulated speech causes real harm to marginalized communities.
This conversation will inform a live interview tomorrow with Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), the leading free speech advocacy and litigation organization in the United States. A graduate of Stanford Law School, he has led FIRE since 2001, growing it from a six-person operation to a 120-person powerhouse, and is the co-author of The Coddling of the American Mind (with Jonathan Haidt)