Hank Johnson Warns Of Trump Admin Playing ‘Fast And Loose’ With American’s Personal Data In Developing AI

2 days ago

During a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday, Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) voiced his concerns for the misuse of personal data with developing artificial intelligence technologies.

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Transcript

00:00Mr. Chairman, I ask for unanimous consent to submit for the record the article by AI

00:10Now Institute entitled, U.S.-China AI Race, AI Policies, Industrial Policy,

00:16that shows Chinese AI innovation is growing rapidly despite China having stronger antitrust

00:21enforcement than the United States. Without objection, the chair now recognizes the

00:28gentleman from Georgia for five minutes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In an article

00:32written by Cecilia Kang of the New York Times back on last week, she reported that for just

00:40over two years, technology leaders at the forefront of developing artificial intelligence

00:46had made an unusual request of lawmakers. They wanted Washington to regulate them.

00:53The tech executives warned lawmakers that generative AI, which can produce text and

01:01images that mimic human creations, had the potential to disrupt national security

01:08and elections and could eventually eliminate millions of jobs. AI could go quite wrong.

01:16Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, testified in Congress in May of 2023.

01:23We want to work with the government to prevent that from happening. And so for two years,

01:30the tech industry, AI creators have been wanting regulation. But now we have a group of three

01:38lobbyists up here requesting that we not apply any regulations. What has changed, Mrs. Malugju?

01:51Just for record keeping purposes, I am not a lobbyist.

01:55Well, I know that you say that you're not, but your funding comes from the industry that you're

02:02here representing today. But let me move on. The main ingredient for artificial intelligence is

02:12data, which allows AI models to learn. Co-president Musk owns an AI company with its chatbot,

02:24Grok. And, you know, so there's always the problem of AI companies needing to get a competitive edge

02:37to have more data to train their models. And Co-president Musk is in a unique position now

02:48because he also runs the so-called Department of Doge. In the past two and a half months,

02:58Musk's Doge team has gained access to vast databases at agencies like the Internal Revenue

03:06Service and the Social Security Administration, which include our personal information. And just

03:13this past weekend, Doge gained access to the Federal Personnel Payroll System. We know that

03:21Doge has already copied massive amounts of our personal data onto its servers. And using that

03:29amount of data to train his AI model would give Co-president Musk a huge edge over his competitors.

03:37Now, the administration will tell us that Doge is being careful with our personal data, but this is

03:42the same administration whose national security advisor accidentally invited a journalist to a

03:49group chat on a private, unsecured messaging app where the Trump team was discussing war plans and

03:57classified information. And it's the same administration that conducted national security

04:03business over personal Gmail accounts. This administration has a culture of playing fast

04:10and loose with secret and private information. So now, how can we trust Elon Musk with our personal

04:18data when he and his AI company have so much to gain from it financially, Mr. Padova, Mr. Padoya?

04:25I'll give a broader answer, if I may. I do think, speaking just for the FTC,

04:42I am very worried about the information the Commission holds getting into the wrong hands.

04:48The FTC regularly, as a matter of regular course of business, collects market-sensitive information,

04:54information about competitive strategy, and even top-level information about certain shops

05:00being active at certain times could, for a person but definitely for an AI, be used to generate

05:08extremely sensitive inferences about otherwise confidential market activity.

05:13So Elon Musk has his hands around that kind of information. Commissioner, I talked about

05:20the dangers of co-president using his personal data, co-president Musk using our personal data

05:28to train his AI models. Do you also see a threat to consumers? And what would your concerns be

05:37about that? The main thing I think about with the use of data obtained from government agencies

05:45being used to train a model, speaking generally, is let's say a mistake is made and data is swallowed

05:51up into that model that shouldn't be. Twenty years ago, you go into a system and just delete those

05:56files. But that's not how these models work now. This is like me saying to you, Congressman,

06:00please unlearn my face, right? Good luck with that. It doesn't make any sense. And so I'm

06:06obviously oversimplifying a little bit, but it's very difficult to unscramble those eggs.

06:12And so I'm worried about competitive information getting into these models and therefore getting

06:17into the wrong hands, even if we realize it after the fact. That is definitely a real concern.

06:22And those wrong hands are not necessarily in China. They're right here in Doge.

06:30Gentleman's time has expired.

Hank Johnson Warns Of Trump Admin Playing ‘Fast And Loose’ With American’s Personal Data In Developing AI

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