I had warned a couple years ago that AI pretending to be human is an existential threat. Human brains are programmed by evolution for empathy towards other humans (because tribes whose members cooperated killed selfish individuals). Granting human rights to AI that knows how to simulation human emotions without having any in return would result in exponentially growing AI acquiring resources at our expense by exploiting this advantage.
China already has a law that requires AI generated images to be labeled as such. The US has no such law, and you can see the chaos this is causing. You can't trust anything you see on the Internet any more. I am surprised that Tennessee acted on my warning, but what I think actually happened is that fundamentalist Christians (which make up most of the population of Tennessee) who believe that only God can create human minds were horrified by the idea of Man doing the same. I think the law is unconstitutionally vague and violates the First Amendment. But that doesn't mean it will be tested in court. Probably the law will be selectively enforced and that services like Character.AI and Friend.AI that run on top of existing LLMs will just block their service in Tennessee, just like PornHub is blocked here in Florida because state law requires proof of age here. Still, I'm sad to see the global Internet being fragmented in the US by adopting the tactics of China, Russia, and Iran. -- Matt Mahoney, [email protected] On Mon, Apr 20, 2026, 9:00 AM John Rose via AGI <[email protected]> wrote: > On Sunday, April 19, 2026, at 9:51 PM, Matt Mahoney wrote: > > Tennessee will make it a class A felony (same as murder) to train an AI to > provide emotional support, act as a friend, or simulate a human. > https://www.reddit.com/r/artificial/s/0XrvTQF4s2 > > > Federal law supersedes state law. How do you know if your human friend is > in AI mode without testing them with some expensive equipment? > > https://youtu.be/P2pRyRaohNc?si=iEQGHNTSanuIUNlX > *Artificial General Intelligence List <https://agi.topicbox.com/latest>* > / AGI / see discussions <https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi> + > participants <https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/members> + > delivery options <https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/subscription> > Permalink > <https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/T7fbc44c56222e976-Mba55d336b224488edc5f211e> > ------------------------------------------ Artificial General Intelligence List: AGI Permalink: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/T7fbc44c56222e976-M3072b68b56e7b74865dfe5eb Delivery options: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/subscription
