In this Rise of AI Virtual Chat from July 2020, host Fabian Westerheide talks with Mario Brandenburg, a member of the German Bundestag for the FDP who sits on the Digital Agenda Committee and works on AI, genetic engineering, blockchain and drug policy, about a series of speculative what-if questions. Brandenburg argues that if machines eventually did all jobs, people would gain freedom to pursue what they enjoy, and says society's goal should shift from mandatory employment to making work optional. He is skeptical that AI will soon receive civil rights but sees possible cases for autonomous ships needing a legal nationality, and favors EU-level rather than national regulation of AI and data. On genetic engineering he says providing genetic information is never wrong in itself, while acknowledging the risk of a divided society between the genetically optimized and the unmodified, and argues political hesitation to legalize tools like CRISPR mainly prolongs the period in which only the wealthy can access them. He also describes hypothetical body and brain upgrades he would want, discusses AI ethics debates in the Bundestag around facial recognition, and closes with reflections on simulation theory and the meaning of life.
Key takeaways
- Brandenburg argues society's goal should shift from ensuring everyone has a job to making work fully optional, letting people pursue what they enjoy.
- He is skeptical AI will soon receive civil rights, though he sees a possible near-term case for autonomous ships needing legal nationality.
- He argues AI, data protection and education would be better regulated at the EU level than fragmented across national or regional lines.
- On designer babies, he says providing genetic information is never wrong in itself, while acknowledging the risk of a divided genetically-optimized society.
- In the Bundestag he favors lighter-touch regulation of technologies like facial recognition, reserving hard bans for cases such as autonomous weapons.
Detailed notes
A politician trying to stay optimistic
Brandenburg describes his role on the Bundestag's Digital Agenda Committee, where he works on AI, genetic engineering and DNA modification, blockchain, drug policy and rural-versus-urban issues, and says his job has shifted during the pandemic from fielding tech-focused questions to fielding calls from struggling shop owners and hairdressers with no background in AI policy. He says his role is to remain optimistic and to give people hope even when he cannot solve their immediate problems.
Machines doing all the jobs and a post-work society
Asked what if machines did all the jobs, Brandenburg says he sees this as mostly positive: people would do less out of necessity and more out of enjoyment, illustrating this with fishing for pleasure rather than for sale. He says he is not a critic of capitalism but believes society should shift its goal from ensuring everyone has a job to making work fully optional, so people can pursue what fulfills them, whether that is law, entertainment or continuing to cook simply because they enjoy it, rather than working jobs they hate purely for income.
AI civil rights and EU-level regulation
Brandenburg says granting AI civil rights is not imminent and not especially dramatic in principle, since legal systems already define what entities may and may not do, though he sees a possible near-term case for autonomous ships needing a form of legal nationality. He argues that AI, data protection and education would be better regulated at the European level than fragmented across national or regional lines, since he does not see the benefit of, for example, different rules for AI in different German states.
Designer babies and a divided society
On selecting or altering an unborn child's genes, Brandenburg says he personally would not use the option given his own healthy family, but argues that providing genetic information is never wrong in itself, only how it is used. Responding to an audience comment warning of a divide between a genetically optimized elite and an unmodified majority, he agrees this is a real risk but argues that political hesitation to legalize tools like CRISPR, for example to exclude Alzheimer's or heart defects, mainly extends the period in which only wealthy people can access such technology before it becomes normalized and covered by public health systems.
Cyborg upgrades and mind uploading
Asked what body parts he would change with real-time gene editing, Brandenburg jokes he would fix his sparse beard growth and build more muscular legs, and says he would want a neural interface giving him an inner display and expanded vision, such as night vision, while ruling out any intelligence-boosting brain modification for now. Discussing uploading consciousness and Altered Carbon-style body-swapping sleeves, he says he would use a second body mainly for business travel to avoid flying, and to better understand differences in experience such as being a woman, but draws the line at running multiple simultaneous copies of himself given the planet's finite resources.
AI ethics in the Bundestag, cities, simulation and purpose
Brandenburg says ethics is heavily discussed in parliament but often not translatable into concrete regulation, citing incidents such as a soap dispenser failing to recognize Black hands and a chatbot turning racist; he favors lighter-touch oversight of technologies like facial recognition so research is not driven elsewhere, reserving hard bans for cases like autonomous weapons. He questions why policy keeps pushing urbanization rather than supporting rural living, describing his own move to a house with fruit trees. Closing on more speculative questions, he says he hopes there is other life in the universe, and on the simulation question he says he thinks there is roughly a fifty-fifty chance that whatever might be "out there" is smarter than humanity, leaving open that we could be living a Truman Show-like existence; he argues that life has no inherent purpose beyond what a person chooses to define for themselves.
Quotes
My personal view is that information by itself is never wrong.
Mario Brandenburg
Our goal is no one has to work anymore, and it is optional.
Mario Brandenburg
There's no purpose, but you can define one and you fill it with one.
Mario Brandenburg
Questions answered in this talk
What does Mario Brandenburg think would happen if machines did all the jobs?
At this Rise of AI Virtual Chat in 2020, Mario Brandenburg says it would largely be positive, since people would do things out of enjoyment rather than necessity, and he argues society's goal should shift from ensuring everyone has a job to making work fully optional.
Could artificial intelligence be granted civil rights?
According to Mario Brandenburg at this Rise of AI Virtual Chat, granting AI civil rights is not imminent, though he sees a possible near-term case for autonomous ships needing a form of legal nationality, and he expects AI regulation generally to make more sense at the EU level than at the national level.
What is Mario Brandenburg's view on gene editing and designer babies?
Mario Brandenburg says at this Rise of AI Virtual Chat that providing genetic information is never wrong in itself, and that political hesitation to legalize tools like CRISPR mainly prolongs the period in which only wealthy people can access technologies that could exclude conditions such as Alzheimer's or heart defects.