U.S. federal AI regulation is on the way, Sen. Marsha Blackburn says, regardless of big tech opposition
As U.S. states start to react to growing constituent concerns around the risks associated with artificial intelligence use, Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn said moving forward with a federal preemption standard is “imperative.”
Earlier this week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a series of bills focused on those concerns — while also vetoing some strict AI conditions legislators hoped for — requiring safeguards around chatbots, labels around the mental risks of social media apps, and tools that require age verification in device maker app stores.
In addition, Utah and Texas have also signed laws implementing AI safeguards for minors, and other states have indicated similar regulations could be on the horizon.
“The reason the states have stepped in, whether it’s to protect consumers or protect children, is because the federal government has, to date, not been able to pass any federal preemptive legislation,” Blackburn said at the CNBC AI Summit on Wednesday in Nashville. “We have to have the states standing in the gap until such time that Congress will say no to the big tech platforms.”
Blackburn has long been a proponent of legislation around children’s online safety and regulation of social media, introducing the Kid’s Online Safety Act in 2022 that aims to establish guidelines to protect minors from harmful material on the platforms. The bipartisan legislation has passed the Senate with an overwhelming majority, and Blackburn said while big tech companies have worked to hold up the legislation from passage in both chambers, “We are hopeful the House is going to take it up and pass it.”
But the concerns that the Act was aimed to address as it relates to social media have now cascaded alongside the rise in AI, Blackburn said.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN)(R) speaks during a rally organized by Accountable Tech and Design It For Us to hold tech and social media companies accountable for taking steps to protect kids and teens online on January 31, 2024 in Washington, D.C.
Jemal Countess | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images
“One of the things we’ve heard from so many people involved in this is that you have to have an online consumer privacy protection bill so that people have the ability to set those firewalls and protect the virtual you, as I call it,” she said, adding that “once an LLM scoops [your data and information], then they are using that to train that model.”
Blackburn is also focused on several other ways of safeguarding the information that AI is using, including a bill focused on how AI can use your name, image or likeness without your consent.
“We have to have a way to protect our information in the virtual spaces just as we do in the physical space,” she said.
With the fast advancement of AI, Blackburn acknowledged that regulation would require a focus on “end-use utilizations and legislate that framework in that manner and not focus on a given delivery system or a given technology.”
That also means reacting to the ways that AI companies change their products. Earlier this week, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the company will be able to “safely relax” most restrictions now that it has been able to mitigate “serious mental health issues,” adding that the company is “not the elected moral police of the world.”
Blackburn said that legislators are increasingly hearing from “parents who know what is happening to their children and that they can’t un-experience or unsee something that they have been through with these chatbots or in the virtual world or the metaverse.”
“I have talked to so many people who are now saying kids are not going to get cell phones until they’re 16, and many parents believe that is just like driving a car,” she said. “They’re not going to allow their kids to have that because we as a society have to put rules and laws in place that protect children and minors.”
Technology
Chance of AI market correction is ‘pretty high,’ says ex-Meta exec Nick Clegg as he pushes back on superintelligence
File: Meta President Global Affairs Nick Clegg speaks during a press conference at the Meta showroom in Brussels on December 07, 2022.
Kenzo Tribouillard | Afp | Getty Images
The chance of a market correction in the artificial intelligence sector is “pretty high,” former Meta executive and British politician Nick Clegg warned on Wednesday, as he pushed back on the concept of artificial superintelligence.
Clegg, the former deputy prime minister of the U.K. who went on to guide policy decisions at U.S. tech giant Meta, said the AI boom has resulted in “unbelievable, crazy valuations.”
“There’s just absolute spasm of almost daily, hourly, deal making,” he told CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal for “Squawk Box Europe.”
“You’ve got to think, wow, this could be headed for a correction,” he said, adding that the likelihood of such an event is “pretty high.”
Bubbles are typically defined by inflated valuations across the private or public market, where the price of a company doesn’t match its fundamentals.
A correction comes down to whether large hyperscalers — “who are pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into the ground and building these data centers” — can recoup their infrastructure investments and prove their business models are sustainable, Clegg said.
“That’s obviously going to raise some issues,” he added, as is “the fundamental paradigm on which this whole industry is built, the so-called large language model AI paradigm.”
Superintelligence versus utility
That “paradigm” is the goal of artificial superintelligence, typically defined as when AI surpasses human intelligence — which is often perceived as the “holy grail,” Clegg said — opposed to artificial general intelligence, where AI systems have human-level capabilities.
Many high-profile tech chiefs and investors have backed the idea of artificial superintelligence, including SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the latter of which created an AI lab to pursue the technology earlier this year.
“I think there are certain limits to that probabilistic AI technology, which means that it won’t perhaps be quite as all singing and all dancing as people suggest,” Clegg added. “But it doesn’t mean that technology itself is not going to persist, it’s not going to flourish and is not going to have a huge effect.”
Indeed, Clegg’s former employer Meta emerged from the dot-com era bubble and is today one of the world’s largest companies. Amazon and Google charted a similar course, showing that a bubble bursting does not always mean the end of a company.
It’s a common adage in venture capital that the best companies are built in a downturn or tough funding environment, often due to investors watching their bottom line more closely and putting greater emphasis on sound business metrics when making investment decisions. This forces business leaders to operate more efficiently, with those who can do more with less funding likely outliving competitors.
Clegg’s stance mirrors that of other investors and tech leaders, who believe a bubble is emerging, but it doesn’t mean that AI isn’t here to stay.
The pile-in has created an “industrial bubble” but “AI is real, and it is going to change every industry,” Jeff Bezos told a crowd at Italian Tech Week earlier this month.
There is low-hanging fruit where AI can be applied quickly, but society at large will adopt the technology more slowly, according to Clegg.
“There’s a lot of hype. People in Silicon Valley assume that if you invent a technology on Tuesday, everybody’s going to use it on Thursday. It’s not actually how it works at all,” he said.
“It took 20 years for all of us to get onto desktop computing after desktop computing was technologically feasible. So, I think it’s the pace that is the thing to look out for. That will vary sector from sector to sector, country by country, but I think it might be just a little bit slower than some of the technologists themselves are predicting at the moment,” he added.
Technology
TSMC hits yet another record as profit surges 39%, beating estimates on AI chip demand surge
People walk past a PCCW sign in Hong Kong.
Mike Clarke | AFP | Getty Images
Regulators in the U.S. have moved to block one of Hong Kong’s largest telecommunications companies from accessing domestic networks, citing national security concerns.
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission announced on Wednesday that it had initiated proceedings to potentially bar HKT Trust and HKT Ltd and its subsidiaries from interconnecting with American networks, escalating concerns over its ties to China.
The government agency asked HKT, which is a subsidiary of information and communication technology giant PCCW, to justify why its authorizations should not be revoked. HKT’s current hold permits allowing direct exchange of calls and data with U.S. carriers.
China Unicom, which owns about 18.4% of PCCW, lost its own U.S. network access in 2022 due to similar concerns.
“The FCC’s action on HKT today is an appropriate step towards ensuring the safety and integrity of our communications networks,” FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in a statement.
“The FCC will continue to safeguard America’s networks against penetration from foreign adversaries, like China.“
The Hong Kong-listed shares of HKT fell more than 5%, while PCCW fell 3.6% in Thursday trading.
Share price of HKT and PCCW
According to their 2024 annual reports, HKT and PCCW derived about 13% of their 2024 revenues from regions outside greater China and Singapore, though specific countries weren’t detailed. HKT made up about 90% of the group’s total revenue.
Neither PCCW nor HKT immediately responded to CNBC’s requests for comment.
Under the leadership of Carr, the FCC has expanded efforts to expel Chinese state-linked entities, including China Telecom, Pacific Networks and ComNet, from U.S. markets.
On Friday, the FCC announced that the major U.S. online retail websites had removed millions of listings for banned Chinese electronics as part of its broader China crackdown.
Caught in U.S.-China trade tensions
PCCW is majority-owned by Hong Kong tycoon Richard Li, son of billionaire Li Ka-shing, who has increasingly found his businesses caught in the crossfire of the U.S.-China trade tensions.
FWD Group, owned by Li’s Pacific Century Group, recently faced hurdles expanding into mainland China amid backlash from regulators in China, Bloomberg reported in July.
In March, Beijing reportedly instructed state-owned firms to pause new deals with businesses linked to Li Ka-shing and his family after their conglomerate CK Hutchison agreed to transfer stakes in over 40 global ports — including two in Panama — to a BlackRock-led consortium.
The ports deal stalled after Beijing objected to the exclusion of Chinese investors, with CK Hutchison indicating it no longer plans to comeplete the transaction in 2025.
The FCC’s latest move against HKT also comes as U.S. President Donald Trump escalates his trade war with China.
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports2 years agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports3 years agoButton battles heat exhaustion in NASCAR debut
-
Sports3 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment1 year agoHere are the best electric bikes you can buy at every price level in October 2024