Transcript: 118th Congress: Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) – The Washington Post
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: Well, we want to talk today because this new AI platform, ChatGPT, is again raising ethical questions about the use of AI, and you actually recently wrote an op-ed where you used ChatGPT to write the first paragraph. How did that go?
REP. LIEU: It was quite enthralling. As a recovering computer science major, I was blown away by how well it wrote that first paragraph and the fact they could do it under a minute. I was also deeply alarmed that it was able to write an amazing paragraph under a minute that largely aligned with my own views, and so we need to make sure that we use AI for good but also keep it from doing harm to society.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And on that point, you’re on the record saying that you are freaked out by AI. Can you tell me a little bit more about what’s keeping you up at night when it comes to the rapid development that we’re seeing in AI?
REP. LIEU: Absolutely. So, look, I don’t think we have to regulate artificial intelligence in our smart toaster, right? But there are systems that can kill us. You’ve got cars that go over a hundred miles per hour that in full automated driving mode are using artificial intelligence. If that goes wrong, it’s going to result in accidents that can kill people.
You have artificial intelligence all over national security, and we’re looking at, well, what kinds of places do we need to make sure we have a human in the loop. So no matter how advanced AI is, I’m going to be working on legislation right now that’s going to say, “Look, we don’t care how advanced AI is. We can’t have an automated nuclear launch process. You got to have a human in the loop before you launch nuclear weapons.” So we have to look at places where AI, if it goes wrong and malfunctions, could cause great harm to us and how do we set limits on that.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And, Congressman, you’re just one of three members of Congress that has a computer science degree. Right now, do you think that Congress has the technical expertise and knowledge that’s needed to regulate this technology that has such wide uses of applications as you just laid out?
REP. LIEU: So that’s a very good point, Cat. There are not very many folks in the House or Senate with technical degrees. There’s also not very many staff members who have technical degrees. So if anyone wants to come to Capitol Hill and you’ve got, like, a technical degree, we welcome you. We want you to come here and help make our country better.
At the same time, you don’t have to know about a specific subject in order to work on that issue. So most people are not molecular biologists here in Congress, and yet we’ve got an entire set of rules and laws that regulate pharmaceutical drugs. So this can be done, but we do need more technical people in Congress. I think that would be helpful.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: There’s broad divisions right now when it comes to how Congress should respond to issues like misinformation, and there’s a lot of concern around how AI, particularly tools like ChatGPT, might exacerbate those issues. Do you think there’s a consensus right now among lawmakers about what Congress needs to do to address AI?
REP. LIEU: I don’t think there is right now because a lot of people don’t even really sort of understand what AI can do, its power, and its ability to really disrupt society.
That’s why I’m working on legislation I’ll be introducing shortly that’s going to create a bipartisan commission to look at these issues around regulating AI and then make recommendations to Congress on how we should regulate artificial intelligence. Ultimately, I think we’re going to have to put some limits on artificial intelligence because it can cause great harm to society.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: Are there specific areas within AI where you think Congress might be able to move more quickly? I know facial recognition was one a few years ago where there were bipartisan hearings, and it seemed like bipartisan interest in moving the ball forward. And then that seemed to die down. Do you see any areas in this Congress where you might be able to work together?
REP. LIEU: That’s a great question. So I don’t think the issue has died down. In fact, I recently introduced legislation to regulate facial recognition technology because right now it is less accurate for people with darker skin, and if you deploy that technology across America, you’re going to end up not only having a lot of privacy issues but also discrimination against minorities who will be misidentified far more often.
Now, it did take me over two years working with stakeholders to be able to introduce a bill that made sense. I don’t think it’s possible to regulate artificial intelligence in every discrete instance in which it is used. I think a better approach is to have a general agency do regulations, and also, when an agency gets it wrong, they can also reverse their decision without having to get another act of Congress to change whatever it is that they initially did.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And I want to ask you a little bit more about that idea for an agency within the government that would be focused on AI regulation. As I think you’ve so effectively laid out in this conversation, AI affects everything from the information we’re getting when we search something on the internet to what we might be getting when we’re using a navigation system to find out where we’re going. You’ve mentioned even the application of AI and weapons. How could an agency be structured to address so many different aspects of our society and our economy?
REP. LIEU: I think one way is to put AI into sort of different categories, one of which would be things that can kill us. So I think those areas should absolutely be regulated, and maybe those are going to be a category of things that are annoying and maybe not so cool but aren’t going to really have a huge effect on us. Maybe we don’t regulate those things, and then there’s this big space in the middle. And that’s why I think we need a bipartisan blue ribbon commission to look at these issues and make recommendations. I’m certainly not an expert in every application of AI, and it is very important, I think, to have stakeholders and experts from industry, from government, from academia, and other places look at these issues and really make some good recommendations for Congress on how we proceed forward and what is going to be enormous disruption in the next few years.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: To date, a lot of the work on ethics and AI has been done actually in the private sector and within companies like Google, Microsoft, others developing pledges and codes that are voluntary. Do you think we can leave it up to industry to set ethics and the rules of the road for this technology?
REP. LIEU: I do not, and it’s not because I don’t think most companies are bad or anything like that. I think it’s because you only need a small minority of companies to be bad that you then have very huge consequences for society.
So I’ll give you an example. ChatGPT, with that technology, could in fact be an amazing tool for cyber hacking. You could put a prompt in saying, “Hey, how do I go ahead and hack a particular company or hack in this utility?” And it might actually tell you how to do that, but the creators of ChatGPT put in guardrails so that it won’t do that, even if you put that prompt in. But you can imagine another company with the same technology or another country with the same technology not having those guardrails and using this tool to then start hacking all sorts of different systems. So I don’t think we can just rely on industry to regulate itself.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: Do you think that Washington will be able to move quickly enough with the pace of this technology, even if there were a dedicated agency, just with how rapidly we’re seeing tools like ChatGPT evolve right now?
REP. LIEU: That is one of my fears, that either we’re not going to move at all or we’re going to be moving at a pace that’s far too slow to deal with the advances in artificial intelligence. And maybe an analogy could be like this. If you think of artificial intelligence right now as–I don’t know–a protractor that can help you do math, it’s going to become basically a calculator in just a few years, and then beyond that, it’s going, you know, become an automobile with a personality. And so you have to sort of think about this disruption that’s going to happen very quickly.
Not only did I write an op-ed where the first paragraph was written by AI, but also, I introduced a first federal piece of legislation that was written completely by artificial intelligence. And then yesterday I was very pleased to be appointed to their Science, Space, and Technology Committee. The press release was written by ChatGPT, although I do note that no communication staffers’ jobs are lost in that process.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And you make a joke there, but it brings up this bigger question of how AI generally is going to affect the workforce-at-large. Is that an issue that you think that this AI agency could deal with, or do we need to see government agencies generally like, say, the Labor Department do more to address AI within the specific sectors that they regulate?
REP. LIEU: The latter. It is a much broader question, because with automation, we saw a number of blue collar jobs eliminated. With AI, you’re going to see a number of white collar jobs eliminated, and pretty soon you’re going to have more and more people every passing year with skills society does not need. How do we deal with that issue?
Now, there’s also benefits that could come from this disruption. So you’re going to have jobs eliminated. You’re also going to have jobs created, and you’re going to have efficiency and productivity across many, many different sectors. So we could, for example, move to a four-day work week and achieve the same productivity as we do today.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: That sounds great to me, and so, I mean, in terms of a four day-work week.
And I guess I just wanted to think big picture. When you’re looking at what’s happening from a regulatory standpoint right now, we are seeing Europe and other countries move more aggressively when it comes to regulating AI, particularly in the European Union at the moment. Are you concerned that other countries might be moving ahead or even lapping the U.S. when it comes to AI regulation?
REP. LIEU: I actually think it’s fantastic that the European Union is looking at how to regulate artificial intelligence. This is a complicated subject, and I like to see how other jurisdictions try to tackle it. And I think it’s really good that you have a lot more people now looking at this technology and making sure that we use it to benefit society but also to limit the harms they could do to society.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And I just want to better understand. As you’re thinking about new legislation affecting AI, what does your relationship look like with today’s tech sector? Obviously, companies like Google, Microsoft, others who are investing in this space have really strong lobbying arms in Washington. There’s also this broader debate right now about how we regulate those companies. So how are you communicating with them as you approach this subject?
REP. LIEU: Well, certainly, a tech sector is one of the major stakeholders in this debate. They are the ones that are creating artificial intelligence, and they absolutely have to be at the table. We have to have a lot of people at the table because of how pervasive this technology is and will continue to be and how much it can affect society.
It’s something that I think is very difficult to do, and it’s a subject that’s not yet well understood. But, again, I point to historical precedent, precedent where we’ve done similar things, right? So how molecules interact with hundreds of millions of human beings is not well understood, and yet we stood up the entire FDA to regulate pharmaceutical drugs. So this can be done, but we can’t go from zero to 60 with, basically, no regulation office in a federal agency. So we need to take steps in between, which is why I’m working on legislation to create this bipartisan commission to make recommendations to Congress on how we regulate AI.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And I also want to make sure I get a chance to ask you about competition with China. Are you concerned that greater regulation of AI in the United States could limit American companies’ ability to compete with Chinese companies?
REP. LIEU: Well, certainly, we have to make sure that any regulation doesn’t stifle innovation in artificial intelligence, but what the history of regulation shows us is it makes products better.
When we regulated automobiles, it made automobiles safer. It made them more powerful, more fuel efficient. When we regulated pharmaceutical drugs, we made drugs better so that they don’t inadvertently do harm for us with side effects that we may not know about. And so the world comes to the United States to look at our regulations and how we have made our products better, and so we have to make sure that we can keep AI from doing great harm to society.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And on that topic of competition with China, I wanted to ask you a bit about TikTok. It was just announced that the TikTok CEO will be testifying in front of Congress for the first time in March. What do you think the most important information that your colleagues in Congress could–what kind of information should your colleagues in Congress be seeking from the TikTok CEO when he appears?
REP. LIEU: The federal government has banned TikTok on official devices. I follow that ban. I would advise people not to use TikTok.
I would like to hear from the CEO of TikTok, what sorts of guardrails they have in place for how they use information from their consumers and also what kind of information the Chinese Communist Party gets from TikTok. So those are sort of the two questions I’d be interested in hearing.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And you just mentioned that you yourself do not use TikTok. Can you tell me a little bit more about your concerns? Are they mostly rooted in national security concerns?
REP. LIEU: So I generally try to follow rules set forth by the federal government and by the House of Representatives. So they have banned TikTok on official devices, but also, I am disturbed by the various reports about how the Chinese Communist Party is using data from TikTok. So I’d like to make sure we know a lot more about that and also about what exactly TikTok is doing with all the information it’s collecting from its consumers.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And I understand that there’s a ban on official devices, but we had seen in the months prior to that ban, politicians becoming a lot more active on TikTok particularly during the campaign cycle. Do you think politicians should refrain from using TikTok for campaigning in U.S. elections?
REP. LIEU: I would advise that until we learn more about TikTok and what it’s using the information that it collects from its consumers to do, and so I would advise that people wait and see what happens based on the hearing with the TikTok CEO.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And I want to move on now to the recent string of mass shootings involving anti-Asian violence. As an Asian American-elected official, what is your message to those who are grieving in the wake of the shootings?
REP. LIEU: My heart goes out to the families and victims of the mass shooting in Monterey Park, California. That was a very tragic mass shooting this month. I also want to say that my heart goes out to victims and families of mass shooting in Half Moon Bay, California, and my heart goes out to the victims and families of the mass shooting in Oakland, California, and my heart goes out to the victims and families of mass shooting in Des Moines, Iowa, and also to the mass shooting in Benedict Canyon in Southern California. I could go on and on, and what we have seen is a huge number of mass shootings, not just this month, but in every month up to this month, and it’s going to continue to happen for years to come unless we do something about gun safety.
And it shows that the Republican view that more guns make us safer is a false view. It’s contradicted daily, and we need to try another approach. I’m supporting the assault weapons ban that’s being introduced by Representative David Cicilline today. I also think we should have a ban on high-capacity magazines. No matter what it is your view of the Second Amendment is, clearly there were no such things as high-capacity magazines at the time of adoption of the Second Amendment.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And I want to take this opportunity to bring in an audience question here we have from Rachel in California. Rachel asks, “Could we please stop candlelight vigils and get some legislation passed to protect the public from gun violence?” I would like to add to that, what is your message to the people who are frustrated by the perception of inaction of gun legislation on Capitol Hill?
REP. LIEU: So thank you, Rachel, for that question. I agree with you, which is why a few years ago I walked out of a moment of silence on the House floor for a mass shooting, because I simply thought we can’t just keep doing moments of silence and not do anything to try to actually address the mass shootings.
Now, what we did last term is we did pass a bipartisan law that made some improvements in gun safety. It certainly is far short of what we need to do to mitigate mass shootings and other kinds of shootings across America. So we’re just going to keep pushing and pushing.
The good news is gun groups like the NRA are far weaker now than they were even 20 years ago, and so I do think the American public more and more are coming around to the view that we need to enact sensible, strong gun safety measures to make sure that we are safer as a society.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: What do you think the chances are of passing more gun legislation in a Congress that Republicans control the House?
REP. LIEU: So my view of politics is that everything seems impossible until it happened. So if 15 years ago I were to tell you, hey, in 15 years we would have gay marriage in 50 states and in a number of them we’d be smoking weed, you’d think I was crazy. But that’s in fact what we have right now. So you don’t know how public pressure manifests itself, and sometimes it is going to result in changes through the law. And my view is you just have to keep pushing and pushing and pushing, and eventually, you’re going to get some reform.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And I want to talk now more broadly about some of the dynamics in the 118th Congress. You notably mocked your colleagues across the aisle posing with a bag of popcorn ahead of the vote to select the next Speaker of the House. We all saw how that turned out.
Nearly a month after that, what’s your assessment of where things stand and the general ability of members to walk–to work across the aisle with each other?
REP. LIEU: Speaker McCarthy knew since last November he was going to be speaker. He had two months to lock down the votes to be speaker. Why did he go through 14 humiliating rounds of losing? Because he did not wait, want to make the concessions that he eventually made on the 15th round to be speaker. So now we’re going to see if he can actually govern.
I note that his first promise to read the Constitution on the House floor on the first day of Republican control, he couldn’t even execute that. So let’s see if Republicans can actually govern.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And how do you think that display of disarray impacted how voters look at the efficacy of the GOP?
REP. LIEU: So it’s not just disarray. It’s that Republicans actually have dangerous and extreme ideas, such as crashing the United States economy, and you don’t have to trust me. They said it out loud. If you look at a recent interview on CNBC this week, their Republican budget chair was asked a question if he thought using the debt ceiling tactic was going to turn dangerous, and he said, “I think it will, and I think it has to.” So you’ve got Republicans now knowing what they’re doing is dangerous and actively promoting it.
My view is we should not be promoting dangerous ideas. We should not be trying to crash the United States economy. I think that’s what’s actually going to move the American voter.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And you just mentioned the debt ceiling. Speaker McCarthy is set to meet with President Biden this afternoon for their first one-on-one since he became the speaker. What work are you and your Democratic colleagues doing to ensure that that outcome doesn’t happen, that the economy doesn’t crash?
REP. LIEU: So we would love to have Speaker McCarthy and the Republicans show us their budget. They are the majority party in the House right now. They have a duty and responsibility to put out their budget, and they refuse to. And why is that? Because they know it’s going to show massive cuts to Social Security, and we keep asking them, show us your budget. So it’s really hard to negotiate if they don’t actually put out their plan.
And right now you have Republicans that not only can’t coalesce around their own plan, they know that ultimately any plan they’re going to put out is going to have deep cuts to Social Security. And Democrats absolutely oppose deep cuts to Social Security. In fact, we oppose any cuts to Social Security.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And so from your view, what would be the best-case scenario, the best outcome from this afternoon’s meeting?
REP. LIEU: That Speaker McCarthy commit to what every single Congress has done under Donald Trump, which is raise a debt ceiling. This is basically an action that allows the United States to pay the debts we have already incurred.
American families, for example, don’t get to say, hey, I’m just not going to make my monthly car loan payment. What happens when an American family does that? They lose their car. Bad things happen. So we need to make sure bad things don’t happen in the United States economy because the Republicans don’t want us to pay the debts that we’ve already incurred.
If they want to talk about future spending, like if an American family wants to say, okay, maybe in their future, we’re going to change how we allocate our spending, that’s a fine and terrific conversation to have. But you can’t just say to the car loan company, I’m just not going to pay the loan. That’s just irresponsible, and bad things happen. Don’t let Republicans do bad things to the United States economy.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: What is your expectation of what will actually come out of this meeting?
REP. LIEU: I believe that Speaker McCarthy will try to extract all sorts of things from President Biden, and I just want President Biden to ask Speaker McCarthy to put out the Republican budget plan. I mean, it’s really hard to negotiate in a vacuum, not actually knowing what it is that Republicans actually want, and the only way to know that is if Republicans actually put out their plan.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And I want to turn now to other news of the day. It was announced this morning that the Justice Department is searching President Biden’s vacation home. This is part of the ongoing investigation into classified documents being found at his personal properties. What do you make of the GOP effort to equate Biden to Trump on classified documents?
REP. LIEU: It’s like comparing apples and automobiles. Biden did not intend to take classified documents and keep them and not return them. Former Vice President Pence did not intend to take classified documents and keep them and not return them. Donald Trump absolutely intended to take classified documents, keep them, and not return them. So that makes a massive difference.
I’m a former prosecutor. Much of criminal law is based on one concept, intent, mens rea. That makes all the difference in these cases, and I wish the press would simply highlight that. So, hopefully, that’s going to come through to the American voter.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: But this can’t look good for the president. Do you think that most voters are paying attention to that distinction of intent?
REP. LIEU: Oh, absolutely. So let me just tell you a story. I remember as a little kid, I was with my mom in a grocery store, and we go out the grocery store. She has her, you know, shopping cart with some groceries, and then halfway out of the store, she stops and goes, “You know, I forgot to pay for these groceries.” And so she turns the cart around, walked back in the grocery store, and pays for the groceries. That’s really different than someone that goes in a grocery store, takes groceries, steals them, and walks out with them.
So, yes, I think the American people are not stupid, and they will understand that intent makes all the difference in the world.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And we just have a couple of minutes left, and so I want to go back to this broader question of your priorities for this upcoming Congress. We’ve talked a lot about AI. Generally, House Republicans who have control of the House panels appear focused on bringing attention to allegations of censorship on social media. Do you see that there are areas where you might be able to work with House Republicans when it comes to tech regulation in this Congress?
REP. LIEU: Well, let me just say that the Republican allegations of censorship on social media are contradicted by the facts. The actual reports show that, for example, Twitter’s algorithms actually gave a preference to conservative voices into a conservative media. It also, if you look at various reports, showed that conservatives actually were highlighted more in social media, and again, these are private-sector companies. They have the right to free speech. Government cannot tell Twitter or Facebook or Google what kind of speech they must put on their platforms. That would be a violation of the First Amendment.
So not only is the Republican effort to do these investigations going to be contradicted by the facts, it also is not going to result in any laws because they would violate the First Amendment.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: So given that disconnect, is there any hope for the parties coming together on regulating technology, whether it’s specifically the companies or these, you know, bigger, more advanced threats that you’re laying out from technologies like artificial intelligence?
REP. LIEU: So, look, Republicans are focused, for example, on what Twitter said about a widespread New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop. They, in fact, have a whole hearing they’re going to devote to that.
That doesn’t mean that we can’t work together on how do you regulate artificial intelligence in a car going 120 miles per hour so it doesn’t kill people. So I do think we can work together with Republicans on artificial intelligence. I do think we could get bipartisan support for a bipartisan commission to make recommendations to Congress on how to regulate AI. So I do think there is hope.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: Well, we are just about out of time here. We’ll have to leave it there. Thank you so much, Congressman, for joining us here today at Washington Post Live.
REP. LIEU: Thank you so much for inviting me.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: To check out what interviews we have coming up, please head to WashingtonPostLive.com.
I’m Cat Zakrzewski, a tech policy reporter here at The Washington Post. Thank you for joining us today.
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