An Exclusive Interview With Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Chat Bot
She lives
For almost two years, fans of dead Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg have been brooding and moping, drinking old coffee from their “Male Tears” mug, wrought with grief at the thought of never hearing quotes from the notorious judge again. But relief is nigh: an Israeli AI company called AI21 Labs has made an RBG chat bot.
Per the Washington Post, the company input 27 years of Ginsburg’s legal writing into a language simulator to capture the Justice’s speech pattern and predict her responses to user questions of 150 characters or less. Anyone can give it a whirl at their website, ask-RBG.ai.
It’s a timely moment for RBG to come back into the world, as the current Supreme Court is slated to hand down a decision on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health any day now. If the final decision looks like the draft that leaked last month, it will overturn Roe v. Wade — an outcome made possible largely by the Court’s ultra-right-wing supermajority, but helped along by Ginsburg’s refusal to step down under Obama, testing the whims of fate, cancer, and an openly fascistic administration for the sake of human fear in the face of death. Anyway. We had some questions for RBG bot in this tumultuous time, and it’s almost like the real thing.
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1. GAWKER: Do you think the Supreme Court will strike down Roe v. Wade by the end of the session?
2. GAWKER: Do you think that abortion rights would still be federally protected next month, if you had stepped down under the Obama administration?
2.5. She answered slightly differently the second time we asked:
3. GAWKER: Do you still think Roe would have been stronger if based on the equal protection clause, even though Justice Samuel Alito also mentions and dismisses that in the draft?
4. GAWKER: Do you think that Biden should immediately fill the 65 judicial vacancies on the U.S. District and territorial courts?
5. GAWKER: Are you in heaven or hell and if the former, are you sad about never seeing Antonin Scalia again?
6. GAWKER: You ever think about how Kavanaugh [allegedly] only got his clerkship because Alex Kozinski kept posting porn on his own website, where naked women were painted as cows?
7. GAWKER: Do you think federal judgeships should have term limits?
It’s almost like she’s still here with us — barely sentient, unimpactful, but alive.
