From New York, this is Democracy Now.

What to the American slave is your 4th of July.

I answer a day that reveals to him

more than all other days of the year,

the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is a constant victim.

To him, your celebration is a sham.

What to the slave is your 4th of July?

We'll hear Frederick Douglass's 1852 Independence Day address,

read by the late great James Earl Jones.

Then, to journalist Karen Hall, author of the new book, Empire of AI,

Dreams and Nightmares, and Sam Altman's Open AI.

Every single community that I spoke to, whether it was artists having their intellectual property taken,

or Chilean water activists having

their fresh water taken. They all said that when they encountered the empire, they initially

felt exactly the same way. A complete loss of agency to self-determine their future. And that is when

I realized the horizontal harm here is

AI is threatening democracy. If the majority of the world is going to feel this loss

of agency over self-determining their future, democracy cannot survive. All that and more

coming up.

This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the Warren Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman.

Today in this special broadcast, we begin with the words of Frederick Douglass. Born into slavery around 1818, Douglas became a key leader of the abolitionist movement. On July 5, 1852, in Rochester, New York, Frederick

Douglas gave one of his most famous speeches, What to the slave is your 4th of July? He was addressing the Rochester

...