Op-eds etc.
China is exporting its AI governance model; democracies must act now or risk letting others define the future of speech. By Jordi Calvet-Bademunt and Jacob Mchangama “China is going to win the AI race,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang warned recently. In a follow-up statement released shortly after making that bold proclamation, Huang softened his tone, […]
Has Europe’s crackdown on free speech become a bigger threat to democracy than ‘the extremists’ it seeks to contain? By Jacob Mchangama On the morning of November 26, three armed police officers showed up at the Berlin apartment of American playwright C.J. Hopkins. They presented a warrant, seized his computer, and questioned both him and […]
By Jacob Mchangama and Jordi Calvet-Bademunt The Trump administration is waging a public crusade against so-called “woke AI,” emphasizing the need for “neutral models” that engage in “truth seeking” instead of promoting certain (left-leaning) biases. We recently warned that such actions pose significant risks to free expression. Many Europeans are likely to roll their eyes […]
By Jacob Mchangama and Jordi Calvet-Bademunt This week, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei publicly defended his company against White House artificial intelligence czar David Sacks’ accusation that Anthropic is building “woke AI.” In other words, the leader of a $183 billion AI company found himself reassuring the current administration that his company’s AI chatbot wouldn’t spread […]
By Jacob Mchangama [ . . . ] The Trump administration has moved with startling speed from trumpeting free speech to seeking to criminalize it. At first glance, that might seem to vindicate the arguments in the historian Fara Dabhoiwala’s new book, What Is Free Speech? The History of a Dangerous Idea. Dabhoiwala believes that […]
By Jacob Mchangama Growing up in Denmark in the early 2000s, I rarely worried about my right to free speech. In this cozy haven of liberal values and secular democracy, speaking freely felt as natural as breathing. Few contested this state of affairs, least of all religious groups, whose influence had long since faded. That […]
By Jacob Mchangama In 1742 David Hume boasted that: “Nothing is more apt to surprise a foreigner than the extreme liberty which we enjoy in this country of communicating whatever we please to the public”. Voltaire saw 18th-century Britain as a paradise of tolerance and freedom that stood in stark contrast to despotic France. Today […]
By Jacob Mchangama The assassination of Charlie Kirk was a tragic illustration of the public’s collapsing belief in free speech. His arguments weren’t met with rebuttals, but bullets — a shocking affront to America’s longstanding commitment to civil discourse. For a brief moment, it seemed Americans of all political stripes might unite in denouncing the […]
By Jacob Mchangama In 1649, a group of English radicals sent a petition to the House of Commons. In it, they lamented the licensing of printing — which allowed the government to “pre-censor” books and pamphlets — as well as the harsh punishments for publishing unlicensed or “scandalous” ones. The radicals warned that this kind […]
By Joan Barata When we talk about minors and media and communication platforms—and here we can include both traditional media such as radio and television, and even cinema, theater, social networks, messaging systems, and video-sharing platforms—the general tendency, from a political and legal perspective, is to adopt a defensive stance or one of protecting the […]