How we regulate AI could decide the next century

0:00A lot of people can't afford going to a therapist. Can't afford. Right. And so you're like, well, how do we get something that's available to everyone? Perfectly fine thing for society one to say, hey, look, if I'm going to be adopting societies to social media platform, I need to understand more about how that algorithm is affecting my society. The more that we defer this, this kind of future, the more that you cause a lot of human suffering. Reid, as AI is progressing and heating up, lawmakers are paying attention. So the states of Utah and California have enacted rules requiring businesses and and government agencies to disclose when they are using AI systems.

0:36Utah's regulation via its Department of Commerce mandates that state regulated businesses inform consumers when an AI system is used in communication or service delivery. Consumers in Utah must be able to ask whether they're interacting with a human or an AI, and if AI is involved in any way, the chatbot or system must truthfully indicate that they're using AI. Also, California expanded its earlier chatbot disclosure law, which was first passed in 2019, to cover law enforcement agencies requiring disclosures when AI assistants are drafting incident reports. So this California and Utah laws, these are all on the heels of Illinois, which passed the Wellness and Oversight for Psychological Resources Act.

1:20And this act prohibits using AI for therapeutic decision-making in mental health care. That law allows AI to be used for administration and supplementary support for licensed professionals, but it's actually illegal for AI to provide mental health therapy itself. On the heels of three states coming out with prominent AI legislation, where do you think that legislation like this is coming from? And then what do you think the impact is going to be? Well, the most general, though, is a specific, is that people say, hey, well, taking you seriously, this AI thing is going to be really important. and, you know, as usual, one of the reasons why people tend to be negative on the future of technology is you've got, so you've got 100 people and two people are creating the technology, the other 98 people aren't.

2:03But it's affecting the way the other 98 people work. They all go, I don't want any of this change. I'm perfectly happy with where I am. I can advocate reasons for it. It works just fine. You know, the horses, you know, are a much more better way of doing transport than the car, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so you tend to get that and that tends to get reflected in politics. And so, you know, there's different cases in these things. I have, generally speaking, been a pretty strong advocate and positive on transparency. So I think it's transparency, you know, like the Utah law, like, am I interacting with an AI?

2:41The answer should be not deceptive, e.g. it should be yes or no and accurate or yes in some ways and no one others, but it should be an accurate statement. I think it also is useful to say, hey, there's certain kinds of reports on usage of it and how it's used and what's going on, either from the tech companies, you know, Copilot, OpenAI, Gemini, Cloud, et cetera, or others and saying, here's where AI is at. And some of that may require a consumer or public disclosure. Some of that may require a kind of an audited internal document that a government can request if they need or is filed with government stuff.

3:20And I think transparency is, generally speaking, very good. That's also including the California law of saying, hey, it's got to be clarity about where and how it's being used. Now, that being said, I think that the tendency will be to say, well, this is the reason why we've got to have license programs for hairdressers, for hair cutters, right? And you cannot offer a service cutting hair unless you have a license. And it's like, well, it's unclear why you shouldn't be able to offer like cutting hair without a license. You may have to say I am licensed or I'm not licensed, right? But it's kind of the question about like regulatory capture and all the rest of that.

4:07So there's the corporations or, you know, trade associations or other things mixed into this is undoubtedly, like, not knowing the specifics, but if, like, I would hazard a guess what's behind Illinois, it's the associations going, oh, the AIs are much worse than human beings for medical things. So sure, you can use them the way we want to use them for, like, scheduling our appointments. But no, you can't use them for talking to people because it's not as good as us in talking to people. Well, Reid, let me actually push on that thread because I think most people actually would agree that they want therapists to be licensed.

4:44Forget hairdressers. I want all mental health therapists to be licensed. And that seems like, oh, that's probably reasonable. So the Illinois law, what if instead of banning AI therapy, it just said you had to be licensed? You have to pass a certain standard of care that regular therapist has to jump over as well. Would that be OK? That would definitely be OK. Look, I do think that there are cases where licensing is important. I do think that one of the things that the problem with a licensing regime tends to be is like, say, hey, there's an option where you must be licensed. And there's an option where license is irrelevant.

5:20And there's also an option where you must disclose if you're licensed or not. Right. And, you know, too often it kind of goes all the way to the license bucket, you know, constantly as you create over time. And it's just like laws get longer and more complex and so forth, rather than getting refactored. And I think it's useful to have them refactoring. But I certainly have no objection to, for example, saying, look, we think the following kinds of therapeutic mental care must be licensed in the following ways. And then we're going to develop a regime for whether or not your chatbot is licensed or not for this.

6:00And we give it some clear thing. Now, the tenancy will be a little bit like the autonomous vehicles, which is, well, you should only release the autonomous vehicle when it has zero chance of accidents, even on a road being driven by other human beings, some of whom are tired, some of whom are drunk, et cetera, et cetera. And you're like, look, what you want is you want it to be much better than the average driver. But once you get much better than the average driver, the more you're trading average driver for the AV, you're actually improving safety overall on the road. And that shouldn't be the criteria.

6:38And so the similar thing would need to be on the equivalent of what is licensing or certifying an AI would be better than the average therapist. It's a little bit like, for example, your radiology screen today. If you had to pick between an unknown but licensed doctor and an AI, you'd pick the AI from the capabilities today, from the getting it right. Now, what you actually pick would either be the absolute best radiologist or like a really good radiologist, absolute best together with the AI. That's what you'd want to have. And so that's what we should be driving to. And we shouldn't be kind of trying to because, you know, the more that we defer this, this kind of future, the more that you cause a lot of human suffering.

7:24Because, for example, like take the mental health thing. You know, currently a lot of people can't afford going to a therapist, can't afford. Right. And so you're like, well, how do we get something that's available to everyone, available to the, you know, the college student who, you know, maybe has access to college facilities or maybe not, or it's 11 p.m. on a Thursday and da, da, da. Like, you want to be able to navigate these kinds of things. And that's really important. We now have this patchwork of AI laws, some of which you think are good and reasonable and some of which you think are harmful.

8:01So, Reid, my question is, where do you think state-level legislation like this is coming from, and what do you think the impact is going to be? Well, generally speaking, state-by-state tends to be inefficient because it tends to accrete like you've got 50 different legal codes you need to get to, you know, or even more as you get to other countries and all the rest. And that tends to be to impede progress and create weird liabilities. Um, the states might even bounce off each other in various ways and do contradictory things. Anyway, so there's a stack of stuff there. So I tend to be like hesitant on it.

8:39But on the other hand, there's a feature of the state to state thing too, which is, you know, part of the thing we get, we benefit too little from in the U.S. is, hey, let's, let's have Petri dishes and which ones are really working. Let's learn from that and then go. And so like some of that I think is good. So it's not categorically all state good, all state bad. You ultimately want to get to kind of simple things that allows innovation, allows business operation, allows iterative deployment. So you're learning and getting better and doing that without like undue liability issues in order to kind of improve through it.

9:19That's what you target want. But some state-based legislation can be good within that target. Absolutely. All right, Reid, we've all seen this headline, ChatGPT will no longer give health advice or legal advice. OpenAI has introduced new restrictions that prevent ChatGPT from giving personalized medical, legal, or financial advice. They're repositioning it as sort of more of an educational tool. And the change, effective October 29th, aims to limit liability risks and comply with tightening regulations around AI-generated guidance. I have to admit, I absolutely use ChatGPT specifically for health advice, so I'm not sure how I feel about this change, because ChatGPT will now only explain general concepts and principles, not prescribe medications.

10:05I don't know if they could ever prescribe medications. They could suggest write legal documents or give investment recommendations. Similar limits are going to apply to emotional, legal, and financial questions. So ChatGPT will be able to define terms or processes, but they must refer users to qualified professionals. I think privacy concerns also play a role here about people sort of sharing personal or sensitive details with AI. Could that expose you to data risks if this data is then entering bigger data sets? And so again, this is something I absolutely use. I would never use it as a replacement for a medical professional, but you and I have talked a lot about how second opinions are so important, and that's actually a great use case for ChatGPT.

10:49So I'd say to you, what do you think about OpenAI actually self-censoring, making this decision, as opposed to, you know, there isn't federal legislation about this, but OpenAI did this proactively? Well, I mean, currently what's happening is there's kind of a bonanza in a certain sort of trial lawyer, you know, kind of attacking the AI companies because the presumption outside of legal guidance on this topic is that they're infinitely liable for any possible misuse. So like, for example, if I went to ChatGBT and ordered up a recipe for arsenic and made it and then swallowed it, it was like, that was ChatGBT's fault, right?

11:32Because maybe I wouldn't have been swallowing arsenic otherwise, even though like I went and asked for it and I made it and I ate it and you said, you know, I consumed it, et cetera. And so this is a natural way that a business should, you know, can protect his liability. And it's naturally then bad for society. Because if you think about it, you know, like in the US, 340 million people, you know, probably the number of people who have access to immediate medical interaction, you know, is very few, probably fewer than a million, maybe it's a million, who can go like, I can get my doctor on the cell phone and call him right now and ask her or him about it.

12:17And then there's a larger number that has an availability for emergency rooms and clinics and other kinds of things. But that's still probably not over, call it 200, 250 million within the entire US population. And sometimes that might be a two-hour drive or sometimes that may be too expensive or not available and certainly not immediate, et cetera. And so I actually think, and I myself know people who have saved their friends' lives because they got an opinion. Opinion was questionable. Asked Chad GVD, and Chad GVD said, take your friend to a different hospital. And the different hospital was like, glad you got here.

13:02You would have been dead two hours later, and we wouldn't have been able to do anything to help you. And so I think it's a huge suffering and loss to society but is a natural thing for the companies to do unless, as I've been trying to encourage various kind of mostly national governments to do, U.S. and Europe and others, is to say give a kind of a safe harbor line. So, for example, what if the Safe Harbor line was to say, look, I'm not a doctor and you should consult with a doctor if you can, right? But if you can't or not immediately available, like, here's what I would think. But as long as I said that, then it's okay, say.

13:45I mean, that would be overly simplistic, but something like that. And, you know, to give some channel for it for medical, which I think is essential because I think you can get things for your parents, your kids, or your partner, or your friend, or your family member, and all the rest of the stuff there. And there's a lot of communities that do not have access to medical care. Same thing is true for legal or financial. And even educational, you know, could be the thing to add in. It's like, well, I guess educational, not certain. There's no legal certification, so it's like you can't be sued for it by trial attorneys trying to cash in a buck by claiming absolute liability for an individual misfire.

14:29And so I think a safe harbor channel would be good to create and will be essential to trying to make the elevation of what could be great for people in medical, legal, financial, etc. And I think it's sad that it's updated its policy, but it's understandable relative to how our legal system works. This podcast is sponsored by Google. Hey, folks, I'm Ammar, product and design lead at Google DeepMind. We just launched a revamped Vibe Coding Experience in AI Studio that lets you mix and match AI capabilities to turn your ideas into reality faster than ever. Just describe your app, and Gemini will automatically wire up the right models and APIs for you.

15:19And if you need a spark, hit I'm Feeling Lucky, and we'll help you get started. Head to ai.studio slash build to create your first app. I think all of those are examples where, you know, if you need a lawyer, most people don't have one. They don't even know who to call, let alone do they have whatever,$1 ,000 an hour to pay someone. Financial advice. Many more wealthy people have a financial advisor, tells them what to do. Most people who are middle income or low income, they don't have a financial advisor. So ChatGPT is sort of the only answer. Could you see a world where in the future sort of the medical advisor, legal advisor, financial advisor sort of becomes more like a public utility?

15:56that's provisioned by the federal government? I mean, obviously we want the companies doing the tech, but the federal government is ensuring that it's free for all or that there's some sort of regulation so that they're giving them safe harbor or something like that? Well, it's definitely the kind of thing where I think we should be,

16:16we should give some channels to allow these tech companies to iterate and deploy and to learn from it and to potentially make it available, you know, within a safe harbor parameter. You know, the medical one's the one I've given the most direct thought to, which is like I could easily imagine kind of a, hey, look, I'm not a doctor, or maybe even to the earlier question, like I passed the following kind of exam, right? But I, you know, I can't offer medical advice and assume any medical liability. And so you should talk to a doctor if you want someone to assume medical liability in talking to you.

17:00Right. But if you want the advice independent of that, I am happy to give it to you. And by the way, you know, there may still be legal liability, but the legal liability is, say, for example, someone trained an AI to give people of a race that they don't like deliberately bad advice to try to harm them or something, then you go, okay, that doesn't matter. That doesn't factor into safe harbor. Even if you said those words, that doesn't matter. But it's kind of a presumption of it will create a lot of value for society and for humanity. And so I think it's very important to do that. And by the way, same thing on legal.

17:45Most people cannot afford any serious legal controls. One of the asymmetries frequently, part of the reason why I think cities tend to do more for renters than for owners is because, well, owners can afford legal more than renters can. And so you go, well, what's the issue? Well, if you're actually giving more ability of legal AI assistant, then it's like, okay, well, what are my rights here? And you might not have to unbalance, to disbalance the scale so severely to try to make it a more human process. Anyway, so like I think, or any number of other things in legal, and then obviously similar with financial.

18:27So we've talked a lot on this podcast about sort of the need for global cooperation as it relates to AI and sort of really pushing the sort of Western values that we're interested in. But just recently, Xi pushed for a global AI body at APEC to counter the United States. And so Xi Jinping used the APEC leaders meeting to push a new global body to govern AI, positioning China as an alternative to the U.S. on AI and trade. He proposed a World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization to set governance rules and make AI a public good, with officials indicating it could be based in Shanghai.

19:07The U.S. has rejected efforts to regulate AI in international bodies, and so this sets up a contrast with Beijing's multilateral pitch. So the question is, if China creates a global AI governance body, does that redefine who sets the moral and technical standards for artificial intelligence? And should we have a global body? This seems like a good idea, and it doesn't seem like a good idea for the U.S. not to be a part of it. What do you think? Well, one of the things that I think is going quite wrong with U.S. foreign policy right now is as opposed to, you know, keeping good alliances, partnerships and friendships, we kind of got this hostile tariffs negotiation.

19:48And if you were trying to drive more of the world into the Chinese trade ecosystem, the Chinese tech ecosystem, you'd have to – you'd kind of be unclear if you'd do any better job of it than you're doing right now. So I think we have kind of a serious problem there. and this is just an instance of it because part of is the things that I read is that part of what she's trying to do is say let's create an anti-American alliance and obviously we saw this as a like a picture with Putin, Xi and Modi you know kind of a couple months ago and these kind of things like no no actually in fact like what unfortunately too few Americans too many Americans don't understand is that like our global position is part of what's helped enable American prosperity.

20:42And it isn't just like, hey, our soybean farmers used to be able to ship and now we're not, we're not selling product and we're doing like, you know, we're kind of doing like, like just public funds paying them versus the economic industry going, which is a, which is obviously a terrible thing for your American taxpayer and where the money could be going to other things like, for example, health care or other sorts of things that would be good for the American taxpayer. This is the kind of thing that is creating a problem for the future American prosperity. And America should be in a leadership role here.

21:23As I've punned at the beginning of the year, AI should be American intelligence in terms of how this is operating. And so I think that this is an instance of something that's going quite wrong with the general policy guidance of the current administration. Now, should there be a global body?

21:46Maybe if it's sufficiently lightweight. The problem, of course, when you create regulatory agencies is they tend to just keep expanding their purview. And it's one of the reasons even when things like the UN have been created, things like the international criminal courts, there ends up being places where you've got clashes with them because they're expanding their purview. And I think that creates some problems. But that being said, if you said, hey, we're going to have international laws on some transparency about what's going on, we're going to have international laws on bioterrorism and security, and we're going to have international laws on cybercrime, those would all be very good things.

22:34Now, it's a little bit of wishes were fishes because, like, for example, we should absolutely have laws about how, you know, cybercrime works. We're literally at a global cyber warfare scenario that is kind of la, la, la, not paying any attention to this, which, you know, causes all kinds of impact. Like, for example, hospitals or electricity things being held hostage by, you know, ransom attack groups from North Korea, you know, looking for, you know, kind of payments in cryptocurrency, you know, and so forth. And we have that kind of going on and like attacks of companies. And, you know, all of our companies are being attacked by other state actors, including China, in terms of how this operates.

23:26And so, like, you go, well, shoot, we should have a global, you know, set of agreements on this and a body. And you can't even do it on cybercrime. So I would love it to happen on AI. But the people who are advocating AI don't realize it's like, well, we haven't even got it for the state of cyber warfare, of which one of the things that AI could accelerate, let alone AI itself. So, you know, it's kind of like I would like there to be some, but it's challenging to see how it would be made. And so do you think, obviously, nations are racing to control AI's future, that the US is the same? Are we watching the early stages of a new kind of global alignment that is now built on algorithms, data sovereignty, and what AI models people use?

24:15Well, I think it would be good if it were thoughtfully being done so with that global alignment. I mean, in fact, what you tend to have is a couple areas in the world that have the strongest global tech development, most notably U.S. and China. You tend to have the European Union trying to exert some shaping of it by imposing fines. So kind of proxying growth tax revenue. but without really growing the industry and having the industry grow, which would be much better for not just Europe but for the world in terms of how it operates. One of the things when I go and spend time in Europe, most notably the UK and France and some Italy, I've yet to have – oh, actually, no, I've now had one conversation with a German minister who's like, how do we learn from software in Silicon Valley in order to improve it?

25:11So like maybe the Germans are finally getting into the game. And so, you know, like that kind of thing I think is super important and would be good to have happen. And so I think it's a good thing if we have this kind of, you know, general tech development and maybe some, you know, kind of collaboration on principles. but also because for example like for example you said what would be one simple thing that you wish would happen is global collaboration on all forms of technology to minimize bioterrorism risk and cyber warfare right like that would be just it would be very simple and kind of a beginning of something to do and like get that done.

26:07And then, by the way, then we could see what works and doesn't work. And would we need to iterate to anything else in terms of, you know, kind of, now transparency of algorithms, I think it's generally speaking a good thing. And I think it's a perfectly fine thing for a society one to say, hey, look, if I'm going to be adopting societies to social media platform, I need to understand more about and be, and you need to be accountable more to how that algorithm is affecting my society. And I think that's a perfectly reasonable thing. And, you know, but we're a ways away from that. Yeah, again, if wishes were fishes.

26:47So I want to take us from sort of global geopolitical to very interpersonal. A new Penn State study found that ChatGPT 4.0 performed better on multiple choice questions when given rude prompts rather than polite ones. And I have to admit, this is personal for me because my husband and I always say to our kids, the number one most important thing is to be kind. And our kids are going to be interacting with AI, learning from AI. But researchers found they tested over 250 unique prompts ranging from very polite to very rude. And they found that rude commands produced 84.8 % accuracy, which was four points higher than polite ones.

27:27So not a huge spread, but four points can matter when you're trying to get it right. And so examples of effective rude prompts included blunt phrases like, hey, gopher, figure this out, compared to polite versions such as, would you be so kind as to solve the following question? Related research shows that AI chatbots can mimic human persuasion and emotional manipulation and may degrade when exposed to poor quality data, a phenomenon so eloquently labeled brain rot. And so Penn State professor Akhil Kumar said the findings highlight both the nuance of conversational interfaces and the continued importance of structured input like APIs for consistent performance.