Opinion: A Culture War is Brewing Over Moral Concern for AI; Undark, June 5, 2025

CONOR PURCELL , Undark; Opinion: A Culture War is Brewing Over Moral Concern for AI

"SOONER THAN we think, public opinion is going to diverge along ideological lines around rights and moral consideration for artificial intelligence systems. The issue is not whether AI (such as chatbots and robots) will develop consciousness or not, but that even the appearance of the phenomenon will split society across an already stressed cultural divide.

Already, there are hints of the coming schism. A new area of research, which I recently reported on for Scientific American, explores whether the capacity for pain could serve as a benchmark for detecting sentience, or self-awareness, in AI. New ways of testing for AI sentience are emerging, and a recent pre-print study on a sample of large language models, or LLMs, demonstrated a preference for avoiding pain.

Results like this naturally lead to some important questions, which go far beyond the theoretical. Some scientists are now arguing that such signs of suffering or other emotion could become increasingly common in AI and force us humans to consider the implications of AI consciousness (or perceived consciousness) for society."

The Small-Town Library That Became a Culture War Battleground; The Nation, August 7, 2023

SASHA ABRAMSKY, The Nation; The Small-Town Library That Became a Culture War Battleground

"Over the past couple of years, movements that seek to ban books with LGBTQ+ or racial justice themes have picked up steam in GOP-controlled states around the country. Pro-censorship groups have sprung up at both the local and national levels, pioneered by a Florida outfit with the Orwellian appellation Moms for Liberty. The organization is endorsed by Steve Bannon, the Heritage Foundation, and other avatars of the hard right and has more than 200 local chapters. Egged on by such groups, legislatures in Texas, Florida, Oklahoma, Idaho, Indiana, and other states have either passed or are considering policies restricting what sorts of books can be on school library shelves or lent to children from public libraries. The tiny town of Dayton is one of the latest flash points of this effort to limit what young readers can access."