This exchange in the basement of the Senate with Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) was the lightbulb that transformed into my latest WIRED magazine feature, The Ghost of Privacy Past Haunts the Senate’s AI Future.
My job, as a journalist, is to listen. So I do. But I guess I can’t stay totally mum at this pivotal AI moment.
“AI is going to take all of our personal data that they have in Silicon Valley right now, because y’all haven’t acted,” I had to inform the senator.
The exchange occurred during the first classified all-Senators AI briefing in American history, according to Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. Both Rubio and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) left partway through — which was noticed by their colleagues — and both came out sounding a similar tune.
A tune that, as you hear in the podcast, their fellow Republican, Sen. Josh Hawley, literally laughs out loud upon hearing.
In WIRED we delve into how Silicon Valley is now everywhere. Hell, they all but replaced NASA. A mere trophy.
Upon hearing his fellow Republican’s positions, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) literally laughed out loud, as I reported and as you can hear for yourself in our next episode of LLL.
“Ha. I don’t know that we’re gonna be able to hermetically seal it like that,” Hawley tells me. “This idea that we can just trust Google and Meta to be good actors, you know—not gonna happen.”
WIRED magazine congressional correspondent. Since 2016, I’ve lectured on new media’s impact on government at Johns Hopkins University (MA in Gov’t). @MattLaslo on most social media.
Prof. Laslo reminds Sen. Marco Rubio, “You all haven’t touched data privacy"