(The Lion) — Artificial intelligence companies over-prioritize profit and are failing to protect American children and families, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, told The Lion in an exclusive interview Thursday.
“It’s all about profit. It’s all about money,” Hawley said. “It has nothing to do with families or children – and that needs to change.”
Hawley discussed the lack of regulations protecting kids on AI platforms as evidence of the companies’ greed.
“We should say to these companies, ‘You cannot use your chat bots to push pornographic material and sexually explicit images to minor children, and you cannot have your chatbot tell the minor kids to kill themselves,’” he said. “The fact that the companies haven’t already done this voluntarily tells you everything you need to know about their priorities.”
Additionally, AI companies should supply their own electricity and water after receiving approval from local residents to build data centers, Hawley said, when asked what guidelines should be in place for AI’s growth.
“I’m tired of these companies – they’re the richest companies in the world – coming into local communities all across Missouri and many other states and forcing residents to pay huge increases in electricity prices, huge increases in water utility bills because the data center is sucking up all of the available bandwidth,” Hawley said. “I just think that is wrong and we ought to ban it.”
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called for a U.S. alliance in the growth of AI at the G7 Summit in France Wednesday. But Hawley did not discuss whether America should join such an alliance when he spoke with The Lion. Average Americans must direct the development of AI and not leave its progress to “venture capitalists and the engineers in Palo Alto,” Hawley said in a recent article for The Free Press.
“A country governed by experts is not a republic. AI is, in the end, a question of self-government. It cannot be left to them,” he said.
Instead, America must prioritize the “dignity of the individual” to guide how the country continues AI’s growth, he said.
“We are not raw material in the hands of Silicon Valley. We are citizens. We are husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, all made in the image of God,” he wrote. “We still get to choose what kind of country this technology is going to build. At least, so long as we make the choice now, while it is still ours to make.”
