Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Liberty and the General Welfare in the Age of AI

Opinion

U.S. Flag / artificial intelligence / technology / congress / ai

The age of AI warrants asking if the means still further the ends—specifically, individual liberty and collective prosperity.

Getty Images, Douglas Rissing

If the means justify the ends, we’d still be operating under the Articles of Confederation. The Founders understood that the means—the governmental structure itself—must always serve the ends of liberty and prosperity. When the means no longer served those ends, they experimented with yet another design for their government—they did expect it to be the last.

The age of AI warrants asking if the means still further the ends—specifically, individual liberty and collective prosperity. Both of those goals were top of mind for early Americans. They demanded the Bill of Rights to protect the former, and they identified the latter—namely, the general welfare—as the animating purpose for the government. Both of those goals are being challenged by constitutional doctrines that do not align with AI development or even undermine it. A full review of those doctrines could fill a book (and perhaps one day it will). For now, however, I’m just going to raise two.


The first is the extraterritoriality principle. You’ve likely never heard of it, but it’s a core part of our federal system: one state can’t govern another; its legal authority ends at its borders. States across the ideological spectrum are weighing laws that would significantly alter the behaviors and capabilities of frontier models. While well-intentioned, many of these laws threaten to project legislation (and values) from one state into another. Muddled Supreme Court case law on this topic means that we’re unsure how exactly extraterritoriality concerns map on to the rush to regulate AI—that uncertainty is a problem.

Unclear laws hinder innovation, which is a driver of the general welfare. As things stand, the absence of a bright line as to when state authority to regulate AI begins and ends has invited state legislatures around the country to seemingly compete on which can devise the most comprehensive bill. If and when these bills find their way into law, you can bet your bottom dollar that litigation will follow.

Courts are unlikely to identify the aforementioned line. In the short run, as indicated by conflicting judicial decisions around the fair use doctrine and AI training data, they will likely develop distinct and perhaps even contradictory tests. The long run isn’t even worth considering. The regulatory uncertainty that results from even a few laws with extraterritorial effects may keep that would-be innovator from going all-in on their new idea or give pause to an investor thinking about doubling down on a startup. Those small decisions add up. The aggregate is lost innovation and, by extension, lost prosperity.

What’s more, one state effectively imposing its views on others runs afoul of individual liberty concerns. Extraterritoriality is one part of the Constitution’s call for horizontal federalism, which demands equality among the states and prohibits them from discriminating against non-residents, in most cases. When this key structural element is eroded, it diminishes one of the main ways the Founders sought to protect Americans from once again living under the thumb of a foreign power.

The second is the right to privacy. While you won’t find such a right in the Constitution. It has instead been discovered in the “penumbra” of other provisions. This general, vague right has given rise to a broader set of privacy laws and norms that generally equate privacy with restraints on data sharing. At a high-level, this approach to privacy results in siloed datasets that may contain data in different forms and at various levels of detail. In many contexts, this furthers individual liberty by reducing the odds of bad actors gaining access to sensitive information. Now, however, the aggregation of vast troves of high-quality data carries the potential to develop incredibly sophisticated AI tools. Without such data, then some of the most promising uses of AI, such as in medicine and education, may never come about. Concern for the general welfare, then, puts significant strain on an approach to privacy that decreases access to data.

Reexamining and clarifying these doctrines is overdue. It’s also just a fraction of the work that needs to be done to ensure that individual liberty and the general welfare are pursued and realized in this turbulent period.

Kevin Frazier is an AI Innovation and Law Fellow at Texas Law and Author of the Appleseed AI substack.

Read More

Fear of AI Makes for Bad Policy
Getty Images

Fear of AI Makes for Bad Policy

Fear is the worst possible response to AI. Actions taken out of fear are rarely a good thing, especially when it comes to emerging technology. Empirically-driven scrutiny, on the other hand, is a savvy and necessary reaction to technologies like AI that introduce great benefits and harms. The difference is allowing emotions to drive policy rather than ongoing and rigorous evaluation.

A few reminders of tech policy gone wrong, due, at least in part, to fear, helps make this point clear. Fear is what has led the US to become a laggard in nuclear energy, while many of our allies and adversaries enjoy cheaper, more reliable energy. Fear is what explains opposition to autonomous vehicles in some communities, while human drivers are responsible for 120 deaths per day, as of 2022. Fear is what sustains delays in making drones more broadly available, even though many other countries are tackling issues like rural access to key medicine via drones.

Keep ReadingShow less
A child looking at a smartphone.

With autism rates doubling every decade, scientists are reexamining environmental and behavioral factors. Could the explosion of social media use since the 1990s be influencing neurodevelopment? A closer look at the data, the risks, and what research must uncover next.

Getty Images, Arindam Ghosh

The Increase in Autism and Social Media – Coincidence or Causal?

Autism has been in the headlines recently because of controversy over Robert F. Kennedy, Jr's statements. But forgetting about Kennedy, autism is headline-worthy because of the huge increase in its incidence over the past two decades and its potential impact on not just the individual children but the health and strength of our country.

In the 1990s, a new definition of autism—ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder)—was universally adopted. Initially, the prevalence rate was pretty stable. In the year 2,000, with this broader definition and better diagnosis, the CDC estimated that one in 150 eight-year-olds in the U.S. had an autism spectrum disorder. (The reports always study eight-year-olds, so this data was for children born in 1992.)

Keep ReadingShow less
Tech, Tribalism, and the Erosion of Human Connection
Ai technology, Artificial Intelligence. man using technology smart robot AI, artificial intelligence by enter command prompt for generates something, Futuristic technology transformation.
Getty Images - stock photo

Tech, Tribalism, and the Erosion of Human Connection

One of the great gifts of the Enlightenment age was the centrality of reason and empiricism as instruments to unleash the astonishing potential of human capacity. Great Enlightenment thinkers recognized that human beings have the capacity to observe the universe and rely on logical thinking to solve problems.

Moreover, these were not just lofty ideals; Benjamin Franklin and Denis Diderot demonstrated that building our collective constitution of knowledge could greatly enhance human prosperity not only for the aristocratic class but for all participants in the social contract. Franklin’s “Poor Richard’s Almanac” and Diderot and d’Alembert’s “Encyclopédie” served as the Enlightenment’s machines de guerre, effectively providing broad access to practical knowledge, empowering individuals to build their own unique brand of prosperity.

Keep ReadingShow less
The limits of free speech protections in American broadcasting

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr testifies in Washington on May 21, 2025.

The limits of free speech protections in American broadcasting

The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission is displeased with a broadcast network. He makes his displeasure clear in public speeches, interviews and congressional testimony.

The network, afraid of the regulatory agency’s power to license their owned-and-operated stations, responds quickly. They change the content of their broadcasts. Network executives understand the FCC’s criticism is supported by the White House, and the chairman implicitly represents the president.

Keep ReadingShow less