David Schwartz, Ripple’s CTO emeritus, has warned that government rules around AI safety and copyright could give authorities unprecedented control over political and social speech.
His argument centers on who gets to decide what AI systems can create, know, and discuss.
Two Legal Fights, One Argument
Schwartz laid out the case in a reply thread on X that started almost by accident. On August 18, he quote-posted a Change.org UK campaign asking the British government to limit how much coverage any one person can receive in the press, a petition launched after 249 articles covered sociology professor Jason Arday in the 22 days before his death on August 14.
Schwartz’s response to that campaign was a question: which poses more of a threat to free speech, artificial intelligence or, as he put it, natural stupidity.
When a user named Athena asked what he actually meant, Schwartz explained that AI has become the most effective tool for producing speech that exists, and that governments are currently fighting on multiple fronts over how much they can regulate it.
He then spelled out two specific fights. The first is over whether training an AI model on copyrighted material counts as infringement. Since Congress controls what exceptions to copyright law exist, a ruling against AI companies would mean the most powerful speech-generating tool in existence could only be used in ways Congress permits, effectively letting lawmakers decide what speech looks like.
The second fight is over AI safety regulation itself, which Schwartz argued follows the same logic: if the government sets the rules for what counts as safe, the most powerful tool for producing political and social speech becomes usable only in the ways officials allow.
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“Again, a totally unprecedented threat to freedom of speech,” he wrote.
A Recurring Argument on X
This is not the first time Schwartz has pushed this line of thinking. In late July, Bitcoin advocate and ShapeShift founder Erik Voorhees argued on X that states should not get to decide what forms of intelligence count as safe, warning that a rule against discussing something as narrow as bioweapons could eventually expand into a broader government veto over speech and even encryption. Schwartz replied to that post with a simple agreement at the time.
The broader question of who gets to police speech-enabling technology has come up elsewhere too. Telegram founder Pavel Durov, already facing terrorism-related charges tied to content on his messaging app, drew a fresh international arrest warrant from Russia’s security service in late July, adding to a case that started with his 2024 arrest in France over similar allegations.
The debate also extends to proposals for government-backed AI testing after Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis previously proposed a federally backed body to test and certify advanced models. While OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Microsoft’s Satya Nadella expressed support for the idea, Coinbase chief Brian Armstrong took the opposite view, contending that existing laws covering fraud, torts, and consumer protection could already address harms caused by AI systems.
