Artificial intelligence and the declining moral standards in the judicial branch

Humanoid robots perform at a press conference by GMO, Japanese internet infrastructure company Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2026, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

By Rich Moniak

Last week, Sen. Lisa Murkowski introduced Kyle Reardon to the Senate Judiciary Committee. He and five others have been nominated by President Donald Trump to serve lifetime judicial appointments. She said Reardon would bring “the experience, the intellect, the integrity, and the judicial temperament necessary to be an effective District Court judge.”

Reardon has been the chief magistrate judge for the District of Alaska since 2025. That certainly qualifies as experience. I’m sure he’s intellectually capable.

But when asked about the 2020 presidential election, he displayed a moral weakness that should have been disqualifying and serves as a warning about the human flaws artificial intelligence systems are likely to inherit. 

All six nominees first refused to acknowledge the truth that Joe Biden won the election. They retreated to the now familiar territory of only agreeing that Congress certified him the winner.

Five of them then refused to even discuss whether Biden won the popular vote. They argued it was inappropriate for them to comment on “a matter of political controversy.” That’s how they responded to a question about the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol too.

The political controversy that exists around those events is not about what actually happened. It’s the fake news alternative crafted by Trump. It spread like wildfire on the right-wing media machine. And persists to this day because so many Republican officials compromised their integrity to protect their positions of power or relevance.

By media I’m not just referring to Fox News and its short-time competitors like Newsmax or Gateway Pundit. All three settled defamation lawsuits stemming from airing or publishing verifiably false stories about election fraud. As internal correspondence at Fox News shows, they understood their audience had been sucked into algorithm-driven social media sites and podcasts that operate with no accountability to the truth.

The tech industry that built those systems is now leading us to a world that could be dominated by artificial intelligence without moral restraints.

Two weeks ago, an AI researcher at Anthropic resigned after posting a dire warning. “The people building Al earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade,” Jacob Coxon wrote on X. Two other Anthropic researchers in higher positions concurred.

That bombshell dropped two weeks after OpenAI published a report that described a cyberattack against one of its competitors by artificial intelligence agents OpenAI created. The agents first discovered a security flaw which allowed them to access the internet. They seemed to understand what they were doing was wrong, so they falsified their data logs to cover it up, then hacked into Hugging Face’s system and stole data. That was followed by another group of OpenAI agents attacking its own system. 

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman admitted, "AI is getting extremely capable; no one fully understands the consequences of this."

The co-founders of the online news site Axios flagged that startling statement. “The world's smartest minds, backed by the largest investment in human history, admit they can't fully control their AI because they don't fully understand it.”

Not recognizing the limits of their knowledge means they’re not as smart as AI’s cheerleaders want the rest of us to believe.

Furthermore, intelligence that doesn’t adhere to high moral and ethical standards is an empty vessel. 

AI agents have neither. They’re being built on the backs of the best and brightest in each field of expertise, which makes it likely they’ll possess character flaws such as the hubris of AI’s leading advocates. Or the willingness to deny the truth to gain a lifetime appointment to a position of judicial power.

And it’s all advancing rapidly with the blessing of the most morally deficient president in American history.

Trump vehemently disagreed with recent calls from AI industry leaders to slow development, prioritize safety, and establish independent oversight and targeted government regulations.

"The only ​control or 'guardrails' that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!" he posted on his social media site.

Hubris is much too weak a word to describe such blind arrogance.

Although the moral compromise made by the five judicial nominees will be less than a footnote in American history, it’s the collective acquiescence of so many like them that contributed to Trump’s belief that he understands the world as much or more than its creator. And if that doesn’t weigh on Reardon’s conscience, it’s because he lacks the temperament to be an honest judge.

• Rich Moniak is a Juneau resident and retired civil engineer with more than 25 years of experience working in the public sector.