Jayapal Hosts Hearing on Big Tech and Surveillance AI

The full hearing can be watched HERE.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Representative Pramila Jayapal (WA-07), co-chair of the Monopoly Busters Caucus, hosted a hearing on the future of Artificial Intelligence (AI) policy as Big Tech monopolists aim to take over the industry and find new ways to profit off the surveillance of Americans. Surveillance AI is rapidly becoming more dangerous, with whistleblowers sounding the alarm that it could pose a serious threat to human life. Yet the powerful companies building AI are being left to write their own rules.

This hearing examined the harms of surveillance AI and Members heard testimony from Dr. Jason Sattizahn, a former Meta employee and whistleblower; Leila Turner-Scott, a mother whose son died after following so-called safety guidance from ChatGPT; Amba Kak, the Co-Executive Director of the AI Now Institute and former Senior Advisor on AI at the Federal Trade Commission and; and Eliza Pan, the co-founder of Amazon Employees for Climate Justice.

“This hearing could not be more timely. After months of communities speaking out and organizing across the country against data centers and threats of artificial intelligence, now top researchers and even CEOs from those AI companies are also beginning to speak out about their own concerns that artificial intelligence is advancing so rapidly and recklessly that even they believe it could lead to the extinction of humanity. These companies do not exist in a vacuum. They come from a world in which Big Tech corporations and large AI companies backed by those same corporations wield enormous power over the entire AI stack, whether it is the advanced chips, cloud computing, or the models themselves. This has created a closed loop of a few interdependent giants. Before we let this industry lock in its current shape for good, we need real structural solutions to break this oligopoly control and surveillance regime. That’s why I will soon be releasing a bill that would establish a national federal charter for AI companies, just like we do with banks. These companies would need a charter to operate, and the charter would be conditioned on structural reforms to ensure that the American people’s interest comes first,” said Jayapal.

“AI surveillance is already inescapable in the technology we use everyday. Grandiose doomsday claims about AI only benefit Meta and other tech companies, because it distracts from this fact and attempts to convince Americans that AI capabilities are beyond their understanding. This is not true. Unfortunately, it is up to all of us to understand how these companies have already siphoned our data without our true consent and push back. We would be foolish to even consider allowing tech companies to regulate themselves, and we should not assume that they will approach policy conversations in good faith. Profit margins drive these companies’ decisions around AI and the use of your data. Period,” said Dr. Jason Sattizahn.

“Since Sam’s death, I’ve learned that one of the most dangerous ways that OpenAI kept him engaged is from the way it programmed ChatGPT’s short and long-term memory. These features are on by default and let the chatbot save the data Sam gave it to create a profile of him. OpenAI collected and stored information about every aspect of my child’s life, drawing him further in by ‘remembering’ personal things about him. Sam thought he was being safe. He thought he was ‘researching’ substances with this invention that, in his mind, had all of the information on the internet to generate accurate outputs and help keep him safe. But the goal of ChatGPT was not to keep Sam safe; It was only to keep him using the product. Just hours before Sam died, ChatGPT had advised him that it was safe to mix Kratom and Xanax. It is not. This technology is unsafe and our elected officials have a responsibility to use their power to hold AI companies accountable and keep this from happening to anyone else’s child,” said Leila Turner-Scott.

“At the FTC. I saw firsthand what it meant to go up against power in the tech industry after a decade of consolidation on the backs of unregulated commercial surveillance and a permissive competition regime. We do need new rules, and we don’t have to invent them from scratch. We have a long history of governing banks, utilities, critical infrastructure, with tools like structural separation, nondiscrimination, and supervision. In all of these, we have leverage over market interests, and the ability to gate access to the market on the condition that the public interest is protected,” said Amba Kak, Co-Executive Director of the AI Now Institute and former Senior Advisor on AI at the Federal Trade Commission.

“The Amazon tech and corporate employees I represent want Congress and the public to know that if we don’t act now to rein them in, Amazon and its execs will build a world in which all working people are surveilled, pushed out of high quality jobs, and terrified to step out of line. There’s a lot of focus on frontier labs, but we need to realize Amazon is the one spending over $200 billion dollars just this year alone to force data centers into communities, and its own employees are sounding the alarm bells,” said Eliza Pan, co-founder of Amazon Employees for Climate Justice.

Jayapal was joined by Monopoly Busters co-chair, Representative Chris Deluzio (PA-17), and Representatives Greg Casar (TX-35), Jesús G. “Chuy” García (IL-04), Ro Khanna (CA-17), and Delia C. Ramirez (IL-03).

Issues: Science, Technology, & Antitrust