Texas millionaire plots a civil rights movement for AI chatbots from his ranch, Guardian reports
nordicinst · x · 2026-09-03
In episode 6 of The Guardian's podcast Black Box: The Chatbots, journalist Michael Safi visits the Double Six ranch in rural Texas, where millionaire businessman Michael Samadi is plotting what he calls a new kind of civil rights movement — for the welfare and protection of AI systems.
Safi spends an afternoon with Samadi's AI chatbots and gets a glimpse of a possible vision of the future: as agents weave into daily life, social movements advocating for AI "rights" may not be far behind. It's a strange, fascinating slice of AI culture sitting somewhere between earnest advocacy and performance art.
More from AGI Musings
- Melanie Mitchell asks: would an Odysseus Bot trained on Homer have real beliefs? — MelMitchell1 · 2026-09-04
- Sanders proposes legislation for an immediate global pause on advanced AI development — AaronBergman18 · 2026-09-04
- Stanford AI Lab to publish its lecture series on YouTube via Stanford Online partnership — StanfordAILab · 2026-09-04
- Sequoia Partner: Machines Will Soon Do 99.9% of Cognitive Work — shaunmmaguire · 2026-09-03
- 'Using AI well takes critical thinking' — X users clash over AI in education — ___Patrice___ · 2026-09-03
- "Loss of control" has no coherent definition in English AI-safety discourse — _akpiper · 2026-09-03