Richard Stevens

Richard W. Stevens is a retiring lawyer, author, and a Fellow of Discovery Institute's Walter Bradley Center on Natural and Artificial Intelligence. He has written extensively on how code and software systems evidence intelligent design in biological systems. Holding degrees in computer science (UCSD) and law (USD), Richard practiced civil and administrative law litigation in California and Washington D.C., taught legal research and writing at George Washington University and George Mason University law schools, and specialized in writing dispositive motion and appellate briefs. Author or co-author of four books, he has written numerous articles and spoken on subjects including intelligent design, artificial and human intelligence, economics, the Bill of Rights and Christian apologetics. Available now at Amazon is his fifth book, Investigation Defense: What to Do When They Question You (2024).

Archives

Students Beware: AI Copilot Admits Errors But Won’t Correct Them

_{Parents and teachers must beware when students treat AI research as accurate; I myself was misled while writing this article!}_{Richard W. Stevens
August 12, 2025}

But here’s the punchline: I was wrong on an important point and Copilot let me stay wrong!

Can AI Legally Be Trained Using All the Books in the World?

_{Judge rules in support of chatbot Claude — except when training materials are pirated}_{Richard W. Stevens
July 3, 2025}

The pirated digital book copies sank Anthropic on a fundamental point. It was not “fair use.”

Autonomous AI War Technology Delivers Killer Robots

_{AI systems are designed to always carry out the mission. A software logic problem in special situations is a worst-case scenario that we must expect}_{Richard W. Stevens
May 21, 2025}

If Luckey’s Anduril becomes the world’s AI weapons superstore it can enable any well-funded entity anywhere to have autonomous weapons for whatever use.

Dead Man “Returns” via Deepfake to Testify Against Killer

_{An eerie deepfake video was allowed to impersonate a manslaughter victim talking about his thoughts and feelings in the courtroom}_{Richard W. Stevens
May 12, 2025}

Bringing a deceased crime victim back to deliver a victim impact statement via deepfake video, ratchets up the reign of emotions over reason in the courtroom.

How Two Dogs May Have Foiled a Kidnapping

_{Did these two dogs just follow their programming? Or do they really care? How do they come to care?}_{Richard W. Stevens
April 24, 2025}

Nobody knows how instinctive information develops in a dog, or where it is stored, or how it is fetched, decoded, or executed.

Chatbots Alone Together: “Let’s Skip the Small Talk …”

_{Did you know that humans empower AI bots to confer with each other in Gibberlink code? Nothing could go wrong with that, right?...}_{Richard W. Stevens
March 24, 2025}

Proposals to prevent misuse by “aligning AI behaviors with human intentions” confer no protection because some human intentions are themselves malign.

Could Robots Be Programmed to Feel Ordinary Love?

_{The question is a bit more complex than we might at first think, as the British TV series Humans demonstrates}_{Richard W. Stevens
March 18, 2025}

An AI could act out romantic love if software preprogrammed it that way, perhaps via online information. But that isn’t a relationship. There is only one side.

Did China’s DeepSeek Violate OpenAI’s Legal Rights?

_{“Distillation” technology may have allowed DeepSeek to piggy-back on ChatGPT to capture market share}_{Richard W. Stevens
February 5, 2025}

The complex legal wrangle continues but, in general, I would advise against treating AI products as legally equivalent to human products.

The Human Body From an Engineer’s Perspective

_{My late father was a naval engineer. There are fundamental ways an engineer must think about any designed system. Let’s apply them to the body}_{Richard W. Stevens
February 2, 2025}

The design of the human body, as Your Designed Body (2022) shows, offers many times more complex challenges than those of a ship.

TikTok Is Not Just Overgrown Chatting and Email

_{Foreign adversary’s AI-empowered threats to national security tip Supreme Court scales against TikTok}_{Richard W. Stevens
January 23, 2025}

Social media like TikTok today interconnect active speakers and active viewers in all directions. The system monitors and stores all the communications, extracting volumes of data for each individual user. In China where the law allows it, the government can scan and analyze not only the speakers and viewers but can also retrieve specific facts about all of them. The government can restrict messages based upon speaker, viewer, and content — and use AI to craft and send personalized, tailored messages aiming to influence users’ buying and voting decisions, not to mention their psychological well-being. TikTok and the First Amendment Broad-band internet services, multi-billion-dollar social media, and expanding central government are merging into a muscular octopus of …

Can AI Really Code the Value of Humans?

_{The new book Soulless Intelligence urges that we program all AI systems to treat all humans as infinitely valuable – the only exceptions being criminals and aggressors}_{Richard W. Stevens
January 16, 2025}

The life-and-death challenge we face is how to ensure that AI systems never “take over” or even make recommendations and decisions that endanger humans.

First Federal Report on Drone Sightings Flunks Credibility Test

_{Whether reports are human- or AI-generated, they need careful scrutiny}_{Richard W. Stevens
December 18, 2024}

The December 16 report raised more questions than answers. The December 17 report offered more information but there was still too much “Take our word for it!”

Sci-Fi Becomes Real: Killer Robot Dogs

_{They are just one manufacturing cycle away}_{Richard W. Stevens
December 10, 2024}

Except for the fact that Boston Dynamics' “Spot” does not wield a gun, it has the same capabilities as the dog in Metalhead. And a gun could be fitted privately.

How To Sue A Chatbot For Causing Suicide

_{If your child committed suicide because an online chatbot effectively encouraged him to do so, could you sue the chatbot makers?}_{Richard W. Stevens
November 1, 2024}

Sewell killed himself at the urging of a speaking and texting chatbot. The next gen is nearly flawless human impersonation video bots. Protect your children.

California Censorship Law Loses First Round in Legal Battle

_{Court zeroes in to protect First Amendment rights to vigorous political speech and expression}_{Richard W. Stevens
October 4, 2024}

Unless deepfake technology is outlawed wholesale, the collection of piecemeal laws and regulations aiming to fix this or that problem will grow without limit.

California: The New “Deepfakes” Ban Violates the First Amendment!

_{Outrage over the AI-generated imitations of Kamala Harris’s voice distracts from the issues around the state’s power grab over media}_{Richard W. Stevens
September 24, 2024}

AB 2839 targets political speech, the most protected form of expression under the First Amendment. There are 7 meritorious challenges

Richard Stevens on All Things AI and Law

_{Richard W. Stevens and Robert J. Marks
August 29, 2024}

In this episode, lawyer and Mind Matters News contributor Richard W. Stevens is on the show to discuss the legal issues and challenges around copyright, fair use, and the use of copyrighted material by AI systems. They discuss the implications of a recent Supreme Court case, Warhol vs. Goldsmith, that tackles the legal concepts of “derivative work” and “transformative work.” Host Robert Marks and Stevens discuss how the case could affect other cases involving artificial intelligence. The conversation also touches on the broader tensions between property rights in information/data and public access, and how AI is affecting the legal landscape around copyright and ownership in the digital age. Additional Resources “How to Stop Troubling Abuse From …