Maria Cantwell Warns Of AI Companies Deriving 'Sensitive Insights' Through Use Of Personal Data

4 months ago

During a Senate Commerce Committee hearing prior to the Congressional recess, Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) spoke about the use of private data by artificial intelligence companies.

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00:00Mr. Reid, and on that last point, we'll have you expand today or more generally for the record

00:07what we need to do about that last point. I definitely think in the past we have

00:13cited too much with the big companies on the patent side and not enough

00:17empowerment of the inventors, the smaller companies. So I want to make sure we get that

00:21part right in addition to your recommendations. You've made a couple of very good recommendations.

00:27Thank you. I'd like to go to a couple of charts here if we could. One,

00:31you know, when we first started working on the privacy law, I'm going to direct this to you,

00:36Professor Callow, but what got me going was the transfer of wealth to online advertising.

00:44I don't think people really quite understood how much the television, newsprint, radio,

00:53magazine, the entire advertising revenue shift went online. Now we're just talking

01:01about the internet. Could you bring that a little closer, please? Get that up a little closer. So

01:12we are now at 68 percent. I don't know if people can see that, but we're now at

01:2368 percent of all spending, two-thirds of all spending of advertising has now

01:32taken place online with data and information. So that trend is just going to keep continuing.

01:37Now, you and I have had many conversations about the effect of that on the news media,

01:43having community voices. You know, our community in Seattle, Kink Vibe or the Seattle Times

01:49couldn't exist if it had misinformation. It just wouldn't exist. But in the online world,

01:57you can have misinformation. There's no corrective force for that. But all the revenue has now gone

02:02to the online world. And the second chart describes, I think, a little bit about your

02:08testimony that I want to ask a question about, and that is the amount of information that is now

02:15being derived about you that AI is this capacity to derive sensitive insights. So that trend that

02:24I just described where two-thirds of all advertising revenue, I mean, somebody said

02:28data is like the new oil, right? It's just where everybody is going to go and make the money.

02:33So that's a lot of money already in that shift over those years that I mentioned on the chart.

02:40But now you're saying they're going to take that information and they're going to derive

02:46sensitive information about us. Ms. Cact said it's the way your voice sounds.

02:52You've described it as, you know, various features. So could you tell me how protecting us against

03:00that in the AI model, why that's so important? And, you know, I just want to point out we're

03:06very proud of what the Allen Institute is doing on AI. We think we're the leaders in AI applications.

03:12We're very proud of that both in health care, farming, energy. You know, we have an agreement

03:19today between the United States and Canada in principle on the Columbia River Treaty. I think,

03:24you know, water AI will be a big issue of the future. How do you manage your natural resources

03:30to the most effective possible use? So we're all big on the AI implications in the Pacific Northwest.

03:36But we're very worried about the capacity to drive sensitive insights. And then, as you mentioned,

03:44an insurance company or somebody using that information against you. Could you expound on that, please?

03:52Absolutely. I was talking to my sister who's on the board of the Breast Cancer Alliance about

03:58my testimony. And she said, you know, Ryan, just make sure that people know how important it is for

04:04AI to be able to spot patterns in medical records to ensure that people get better treatment, for

04:10example, for breast cancer, right? And I agree with that. And I'm also proud of all the work we're

04:14doing at University of Washington and Allen. The problem is that the ability to derive

04:20sensitive insights is being used in ways that disadvantage consumers. And they're not able to

04:27figure out what's going on and fight back, right? So, for example, thereby driving up costs.

04:34For example, right? I mean, you know, we know why everything costs $9.99, right? It's because

04:39your brain thinks of it as being a little bit further away from $10 than it really is.

04:43But the future we're headed to, and even the present, is a situation where you're charged

04:49exactly as much as you're willing to pay in the moment, right? Say I'm trying to make

04:54dinner for my kids and I'm just, you know, desperately trying to find a movie for them

04:59to stream, you know, that they both can agree on, right? You know, if Amazon can figure that out,

05:08or Apple can figure that out, they can charge me more in the moment when I'm flustered and

05:14frustrated because they can tell, right? If that sounds far-fetched, Senator, Uber once experimented

05:22with whether or not people would be more willing to pay surge pricing when their batteries were

05:28really low on their phone because they'd be desperate to catch a ride, right? Amazon itself

05:34has gotten into trouble for beginning to charge returning customers more because they know that

05:41they have you in their ecosystem. This is the world of using AI to extract consumer surplus.

05:48And it's not a good world, and it's one that data minimization could help address.

Maria Cantwell Warns Of AI Companies Deriving 'Sensitive Insights' Through Use Of Personal Data

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