GOP Missouri Senator Josh Hawley Tuesday was interviewed by FOX News on Thursday and said he wants to regulate Artificial Intelligence.

If he moves forward and the rest of Congress gives the go-ahead, it’ll be the first time that Congress weighs on the ever encroaching technology.

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“I’m worried about AI’s power to manipulate our attention, to manipulate or opinions, and to manipulate the information that we’re given,” he said.

He added another key point. Government overreach. At first, you’d think it would be government overreach to regulate an emerging technology. But Hawley might make you stop and think. “Imagine that technology put to use by corporations or government to get our attention, to keep our attention and then to try and manipulate us on any number of subjects.”

 Hawley wants to give Americans the right to sue AI companies for using their work or likeness without their permission.

“We’ve got to put more power in the hands of individual Americans to say, ‘I will hold you accountable if you come after me, if you manipulate me and if you try to curtail the information I can get.'”

And, to be fair, tech companies have already faced some regulation by both the national as well as state governments. Montana, for example, became the first state to fully ban TikTok.

Hawley previously took OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to task as he testified before Congress. “It’s really like the invention of the internet at scale, at the very least. Is it going to be like the printing press or more like the atom bomb?”




The question is, will the bill pass? Bills regulating TikTok got bipartisan support, so it’s far from a divisive issue. Hawley does sit on the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law, giving him an inside track in order to pass the legislation.

He may lead us into the new era of governmental AI regulation. Question is, will that be a good thing? Time will tell.

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