Tech Brew Ride Home - (BNS) Senator Ron Wyden On TikTok, AI, Regulation And His New Book

Episode Date: January 18, 2025

I speak to Senator Ron Wyden about the TikTok ban, AI and regulation, tech regulation in general, and his new book: It Takes Chutzpah: How to Fight Fearlessly for Progressive Change Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

No one goes to Hank's for his spreadsheets. They go for a darn good pizza. Lately, though, the shop's been quiet. So Hank decides to bring back the $1 slice. He asks Copilot in Microsoft Excel to look at his sales and costs to help him see if he can afford it. Co-pilot shows Hank where the money's going and which little extras make the dollar slice work.

Now, Hank has a line out the door. Hank makes the pizza. Co-Pilot handles the spreadsheets. Learn more at M365Copilot.com slash work. Welcome to another bonus episode of the Tech Meme Ride Home. I'm your host, as always, Brian McCullough. We are honored today to have a very special guest. We are going to speak to Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon.

Senator, thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for having me, Brian. I've been looking forward to it. So you have a book out, came out just this week, called It Takes Hutzpah, how to fight fearlessly for progressive change. So Hutzpah is a book out. a Yiddish word, I believe it embodies like grit, determination, things like that. Why did you choose that as sort of the framing device for this book? How do you think Hutzpah should be interpreted and

why is it so vital today? Ryan, I consider Hutzpah to be the indispensable instrument for having a better country. And in fact, if you look at our history, some of the most notable events really showed individuals demonstrating extraordinary hutsba, nerve and grit, and being willing to take on the odds. You think, for example, of Abraham Lincoln or Dr. Martin Luther King. I mean, we have example after example, and what I wanted to do was write a very different sort of book. In fact, one of the things of the last few days that's really pleased me as a couple of young people found some galleys and read it. And one of them came up to me and said,

hey, you're the Senate guy. This doesn't look like a book written by a Senate person. What I wanted to do was really talk about how we all have what I call inner Hutzpah, and we've got Ron's rules of Hutzpah, 12 of them, to really let people polish their ability to make a difference in their world and often in the broader world. You also, there's a lot in your book about compromise, about working with people that might be in opposition to you,

either politically or philosophically. Given the times that we're in now and as a Democrat, you still firmly believe that this is a time where compromise is possible and maybe even required? Ryan, I believe in what I call principle bipartisanhip. Bipartisanship is not about taking each other's crummy ideas and then strutting around. Anybody can do that. It's about taking good ideas. And for example, I believe that's what Chris Cox and I did in laying out what has come to be known in many places, 26 words that

created the Internet. And I've also talked in the last couple of days, I'm the author of the clean energy tax credits, more than $400 billion in a very different kind of approach in the last 50 years of gridlock where there was no cap in trade and there was no carbon pricing and there were no regulatory kind of incentives. And I broke the gridlock. And in energy, what I said is we need a cleaner carbon future and connect it to more affordable energy prices and national Those are the three legs of what I think makes for a good energy policy, and I'm still flushing it out, even though we passed the law. And 18 Republican Congress members recently sent a letter to the Trump people saying, we don't want you to get rid of this. And in the House of Representatives, 18 Republican votes for a major technology, clean energy, business innovation kind of approach.

18 votes is a block that can decide what happens. You're referring when you said the 26 words that created the internet. You're referring to the fact that you're one of the co-authors of Section 230, which has been in the news a lot lately, especially with this change in administrations. Do you think that Section 230 can and should survive in its current form? I certainly believe that there's no law that you can't. improve. But the basics of Section 230 were sound when Chris and I wrote this and are still sound today. For example, one of the areas Democrats and Republicans agree on is that there should

be more personal responsibility in our affairs and business and legislation should include it. That's what Chris and I did in 230. We said that the individual who posts the content, who's responsible for creating it is the one who's going to be held accountable, not somebody who's just a publisher. So I think that the fundamental principles of protecting users, encouraging people who don't have power and clout and money makes a lot of sense. And frankly, Brian, I think that the ideas we've had for 230 make even more sense now, particularly in view of this Zuckerberg toying up to Donald Trump.

Because with these big companies doing something like that, I consider that to be a major step towards the reconsolidation of communications in a few hands like Zuckerberg or Musk. And that would take us back to the days before we had the Internet. So Section 230, focus on users, focus on people who don't have power. power and plow. I'm not sure, for example, that the Me Too movement or Black Lives Matter would be out there without the benefits of 230. Well, right. That's why it's been in the news recently. Meta's recent changes to their moderation policies, things like maybe getting rid of

fact-checking, potentially not tracking and flagging viral hoaxes on platforms like Facebook and Instagram. So specifically vis-a-vis Section 230. Yeah. Fact-checking in particular. is a fundamental tool of accountability and transparency. And it is just jaw-dropping that Zuckerberg, in an effort to try to curry favor with Trump, I'm sure that, you know, he's just hoping that there will be some policy that's be important to Zuckerberg and his company, and he'll have curried favor with Trump. It's just not in the public interest. Do you agree with Zuckerberg when he says, and I'm paraphrasing here, it suggests to him, the political wins suggest to him that there's been a change in what people

find acceptable on platforms in terms of content. Do you agree, disagree with that? Let's unpack that a little bit, you know, because people say, well, 230 is the primary reason for there being stuff online that we don't like. That's factually untrue, Brian. If 230 just disappeared. It's been studied and analyzed that more than 90% of the stuff, the filth, and the like, that we just really dislike on the Internet is not there because of 230. It's there because of the First Amendment. And I don't see anybody proposing getting rid of the First Amendment. I'll give you an example that when we authored 230, the New York Times had a long story about Chris Cox and I went to school on a basketball scholarship, the picture made it look like I was seven

feet tall or something and was dunking on the world. And they said these two are responsible for the hate speech activity and the growth in it that we're seeing. And I usually don't kind of follow up with the publication, but I told the staff, we need to do this because most of the hate speech is due to the First Amendment, not due to 230. We brought it to the Times' attention and they wrote a very long response indicating that we were right that if you didn't have 230, you would still have a tremendous amount of hate speech. So what we need to do is find fresh approaches that particularly encourage moderation and the kinds of policies that Chris and I wrote.

So to be clear, the seeming movement from these social platforms recently away from moderation you think is a bad direction. I think it's a horrible idea because if they don't step up and take advantage of the tool that we put in place, that's practical, gives them substantial discretion to do it, what they'll do is find that people will say, hey, you didn't use it, let's pass the law, require you to do it. We are days, hours away from a potential TikTok ban. You're on record, but just for our purposes, what is your personal TikTok ban? position on if on Sunday people wake up and TikTok is blank. How do you feel about that? Well, as you know,

Ed Markey and Corey Booker and Rocahanna and I are all pushing for additional time to have an American buyer. I start with the proposition that I'm for constitutional rights and a particularly important one is free speech. I'm on the Intelligence Committee. I know how serious the Chinese threat is. I've been blowing the whistle on salt typhoon. I led that kind of effort. So I'm still holding out hope. Some people call it a Hail Mary or whatever you call it. I think that Americans would very much like an American company running it. What I will tell you, though, is I would be very troubled if Trump just stepped in and ordered the sale of it to somebody like Elon Musk because Elon Musk was his big contributor in the campaign. I think that would just be corrupt if he ordered the sale to Musk.

So you're not in favor of Musk buying TikTok, TikTok operating it, even though he is an American, it would be under American hands, but you're saying that you're not comfortable, maybe even on... But it's not comfortable with the sweetheart deal. I mean, let's just unpack this. You've got, you know, Trump under the scenario that I talked about and, you know, who knows what's going to happen over the next few days, ordering the Chinese government for the sale to come to Musk who funded the Trump campaign. I think that's corrupt. I think it's wrong. Let's switch to AI for a second. You know, I've been in the tech industry for 30 years, and I feel like AI is the first technology that I can remember people wanting to regulate,

ahead of time to get ahead of the technology before it reaches maturity. Why do you think that is? What makes in your mind AI tech different than previous advances in technology? Well, first of all, Brian, that is not my position. My position is always to try to think through carefully, you know, what you're doing and take creative steps, but also allow for a big birth for developments and innovation. For example, as I did with Section 230 and Chris Cox's bipartisan bill, Corey Booker and Yvette Clark and I have something called the Algorithm Accountability Act,

which says, hey, before we go out and pass all these grandiose bills and have so much intervention in sector after sector, let's think through some of the real priorities, what AI means for people's job and their health care and their housing. And I will tell you that most of the ranking members in the Senate, the former chairs, are now co-sponsors of my bill. And I think we're going to get some traction on it when the debate starts. But I basically share the theory that you're talking about is that, you know, out of nowhere, everybody has a big comprehensive plan to regulate from A to Z. And my sense is that you start with something like the proposal.

I have for algorithm accountability and you go from there. Right, because there's, you know, the geopolitical angle always jumps up when we're talking about this. The idea that this is technology that if an adversary, a nation state were to jump ahead of the United States or whomever, it would have serious geopolitical, even, you know, security implications. But conversely, if there were too much regulation, that would allow a potential adversary, the ability to move. faster and maybe get a leg up. So what's what's your stance on balancing allowing the technology to flower but also in a way that you feel like is responsible for this country? You're thoughtful question. I'm for it. I'm for the flowering, so to speak, to use your lingo. I think that the two are not mutually exclusive. Smart use of innovation is going to help

us be more secure in a dangerous world rather than less. I just don't think the two are mutually exclusive. And if you look again at my record on technology, you know, what I've said is let's not run around and prove to the world that we're unscathed by the facts. Enough people already think that about Congress. They think we can't run a two-car parade. Let's sink it through. And that's what I've tried to do. And the algorithm accountability act that I've mentioned is useful not just because it tackles immediate kinds of issues. It's a representation of the way I've tried to approach technology since I came to the Senate. I think I might have mentioned to you once upon the time.

You know, we thought I'd talk to you about it. When I showed up in the Senate, guess how many people knew how to use a computer? I know not very many. Pat Lady won, a grand total of one when I got to the Senate. And so I had a chance because I went out and asked a lot of questions. I'm a journalist kid. My dad was a writer. He wrote a big book about the Bay of Pigs, the Untold Story.

There was a picture of my dad in Fidel Castro on the back of the book, and Castro says, Peter White knows more about it than we do. So I asked a lot of questions. I wrote the digital signatures, you know, law. Very proud of that one. You know, we signed the contract for It Takes Whitsbut digitally. And I worked with Spence Abraham, a Republican out of Michigan, and John McCain, and all kinds of.

kinds of people. So that's been kind of the way I roll in terms of technology. And I think it's a lane that not as many of my colleagues are occupying. And I hope some of the new members will. I want to do one more AI one before we wrap up a little. With the cost of training, cutting edge models rising to the point where it could soon cost a billion dollars, 10 billion dollars to train a model. Some folks have suggested that eventually, only nation states could afford to keep pushing the cutting edge and AI. And already there are, there's talks of some countries in the Middle East and elsewhere funding and spinning up their own models sort of as a national resource. Would you ever be in favor of that for, say,

the U.S., like the U.S. government may be creating an initiative and spending the money to train, say, a GPT6 or seven level LLM? My seat of the pants take is the technology is going to change. And I want to see a little bit more before I start kind of waiting in to kind of make a bunch of additional government directives. You obviously, as you were just talking about, you were an early advocate for the internet, early adopter, we would say. But you've also been one of the toughest proponents for privacy legislation in regards to tech. Square that circle for me in terms of how that philosophy gellible. with also being an early adopter?

Well, privacy affects, you know, everything. It's a national security issue. It's an economic issue. It affects your health. I mean, you know, recently I exposed the fact that 600 Planned Parenthood sites, you know, data brokers were gobbling up geolocation data. And, I mean, that has huge implications for people's health. It is particularly important now because when I got started,

listen to my voice a little, when I got started, there were limits technologically that afforded people some privacy. In other words, there were places that the technology couldn't go. And so Brian and Ron and everybody else had a measure of privacy. That's not true anymore. That's virtually nothing that can't be surveilled. And I think it's critically important. And I've been involved legislatively.

If you look at the hearing, you know, track record, hardly a hearing goes by. that I don't raise questions about privacy and when publications, Sam, the Senate's leading privacy hawk, I say, thank you very much. With this new administration, do you feel there is still room for bipartisan tech policy and privacy work? Well, I hope so. I mean, you know, there's been some kind of, you know, ominous signs and, you know, in health care policy. if you're talking about middlemen, which is so important, we had an agreement between Democrats and Republicans for the end of the year. Bill, Mike Crapel and I get a 26 to nothing vote. And Trump and Musk come in, I call them the porch pirates and basically, you know, took it away. And maybe they're going to come back to it.

So I get the feeling that the Trump administration is going to say, hey, you know, this is our answer and everybody's supposed to salute. Let's conclude by coming back to the book and actually coming back to Hutzpah as a concept. You outline in the book Ron's 12 rules of Hutzpah. I'm not asking you to go down all dozen, but share with us just a few of your favorite sort of rules for Hutzpah. Well, the one that's very important now is you have to stop and do everything you can to stop stuff that's going to cause people to get hurt. and is bad, and you also at the same time, need to look for good ideas, several of which we talked about here. So I want people to understand that's a particularly important rule. I also think never missing the unexpected moment is an important rule, because particularly

today, when so much of government is sort of scripted out, it's important to look for opportunities. I was able to get the $600 a week additional help for people, you know, when they've been laid off during COVID, get help for the gig workers, of which I suspect you have a lot of your listeners and people are following this discussion. Those were important efforts. And I basically went into those meetings. I saw opportunities when Senator Scalia's, as son who was labor head within negotiations with me and Secretary Munnuchin of Treasury, we just happened to know more about the programs than anybody. We got the extra help, even over Mitch McConnell's opposition.

My personal favorite was number 11, which is compromise isn't about horse trading bad ideas for each other. It's about blending good ideas together to make something that's better than the sum of its parts. I feel like maybe this is the moment for that sort of thinking. You made my day because I think that's what people, when they think of government, you know, Oregon is like 3,000 miles from, you know, Washington, D.C. And to a great extent, people think in my state, you know, D.C. might as well be Mars. And one of the reason why is there's not enough of the kind of work you're talking about. In fact, I call it principled bipartisanship, you know, Brian.

Today, much of, you know, bipartisanship is somebody not really being bipartisan, not really being open to taking other people's, you know, ideas, but they're just really looking for an ideological trophy winning, and then they'll call it bipartisan. Well, again, the book which is out now, you can buy it as you're listening to this. It's called It Takes Hutzpah, how to fight fearlessly for progressive change by Senator Rod Weiden. Senator, thank you for coming on the show. I will say my closing address, I've always thought tech meme had a lot of hoodspah because you offer good ideas and encourage people to think, and that's part of Hutzpah.