JB Pritzker thinks AI could help us live to 100 — or threaten us like nukes

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, has a lot of thoughts about AI, tech, and privacy. Those issues are driving a big and maybe kind of unexpected political realignment — and with the midterms coming up next month, and early voting already underway in a lot of places, the stakes are pretty high right now. And as he notes, some problems are just collective action problems that require a government. We can’t solve everything one at a time, or even one state at a time. And of course, I had to ask him: Are the Bears gonna stay in Illinois? Links: How ordinary Utahns fought the biggest data center in the world | The Verge New York Gov. Kathy Hochul thinks AI should be ‘less evil’ | Decoder YouTube CEO: ‘We’re focused on internal safety efforts’ | CNN Pritzker signs landmark AI regulation bill | Capitol News Illinois Pritzker establishes AI Cabinet amid calls for regulation | NPR Ilinois Subscribe to The Verge to access the ad-free version of Decoder! Credits: Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Decoder’s producers are Greg Ott, Kate Cox, and Nick Statt. This episode was edited by [TK EDITOR]. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• 1:37Speaker 00

  Hello and welcome to Decoder. I'm Neelai Patel, editor in chief of The Verge. And Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. Today, I'm talking with Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, who has a lot of thoughts about AI, tech and privacy. If you've been listening to the show, you know that one of my running theories is that those issues are driving a big and maybe unexpected political realignment. And with the midterms coming up next month, early voting already underway in a lot of places, the stakes for that realignment are pretty high right now. So I asked Governor Pritzker, who is currently running for reelection, about all of that. And he was surprisingly willing to dive right into the weeds of what government is even for. You'll hear him say, and it's hard to disagree, that some problems are just collective action problems that require the government to do a lot of work. We can't solve all these problems one at a time or even one state at a time.

• 2:22Speaker 00

  It's a pretty deep conversation and we got into it on a lot of issues. And of course, I had to ask him if the Bears are going to stay in Illinois. Before we get going, do me a favor and subscribe to Decoder on YouTube, where we put out new episodes every Monday and Thursday. Governor JB Pritzker, you're the governor of Illinois. Welcome to Decoder.

• 2:37Speaker 02

  Thanks, Neelai. Great to be with you.

• 2:39Speaker 00

  I am very excited to talk to you. We're in the heart of midterm season. You are running for reelection. I have to tell you, I have to be very honest with you. I personally feel a lot of pressure in this interview, not only because I'm speaking to a governor, but I went to school in Chicago. My sister still lives in Chicago. My wife grew up in Illinois. Her entire family is farmers in north central Illinois. Boy, do I have a list of questions for you. I gotta do a good job here.

• 3:03Speaker 02

  Well, we're claiming you now that I know all that. We're claiming you. You're an Illinoisan.

• 3:07Speaker 00

  I don't know about that. I grew up in Wisconsin. Here's my first question for you. I'm a diehard Packers fan. Are you going to let the Bears move to Indiana?

• 3:13Speaker 02

  That is not our intention. We are in fact in discussions with the Bears and the NFL about keeping the Bears either in Chicago or in Arlington Heights, but in Illinois.

• 3:23Speaker 00

  I mean, I'm saying as a Packers fan, nothing funnier than the outcome of the Bears moving to Indiana. I just want to put, put that out there openly biased. In this case, I am two shares of that stock. But I'm going to make the comparison here. And the reason I started there is not only because I think that's a funny outcome, although I do, but it feels like we are in the middle of a generational political realignment. I'm sure you feel that in this election campaign. The idea of big business and how that should interact with the government and how the government should be able to push back on big business and not give in to big business. All of that feels up for grabs. And the comparison I will make in this specific case is your fellow governor Gavin Newsom in California, they sued the Ellison family, Paramount, over the Warner Brothers merger.

• 4:07Speaker 00

  Paramount threatened to leave, right? They made a lot of noise about Nashville or Texas or Miami or wherever you make noise about these days. And it feels like Newsom caved. It feels like he pressured his Attorney General Robbont to settle that lawsuit, keep them there. They settled the lawsuit. The next day, the Ellison family is like, we never, we're from California. We would never leave. I see a parallel here with the Bears that is connected to that larger realignment about how government and business should interact. Do you see, do you see that parallel? Do you feel that realignment?

• 4:35Speaker 02

  Well, what I can tell you is we're pretty tough negotiators in Chicago and Illinois. And that's really what we're in the midst of now with the Bears. But I understand your, your point about realignment. I mean, there is a generational change. And I think it's also an attitudinal change about protecting taxpayers, protecting people who frankly are among the most vulnerable to all the technology that's overtaking people's lives and invading people's homes. I do believe that government has to be more active now and become a fighter for our people and not just a collaborator with business on everything.

• 5:20Speaker 02

  And so I'm not, you know, I'm a businessman, as you know, before I became governor. But I also know that the people of Illinois, anyway, you know, my job is to protect the, the working people of this state who often don't have anybody protecting them except a government that will stand up for them. That's kind of the realignment that I see. And that generational shift, I agree with you. It's partly a Democratic Party generational shift. Generationally, we're a little more aggressive. And I'm, you know, I'm probably older than, than the next generation that's already possibly taking office this November. I'm 61 years old, but I think of myself anyway, having come out of the tech world and, and as somebody who has been a fighter for progressive values,

• 6:05Speaker 02

  that yeah, we gotta become more aggressive and make sure we're standing up for our people.

• 6:09Speaker 00

  There are two places where I see the realignment in particular. One is data centers, one is privacy, right? And you just see that as a bipartisan backlash to those things. I would actually add a third, right? Which is antitrust broadly. It's weird. If you go into Silicon Valley, David Sacks lately is retweeting Lena Kahn from the Biden administration, talking about whether the AI industry needs an antitrust exemption to manage safety. And they both agree that these companies don't need antitrust exemptions. They actually should be more competitive. And again, putting that in the context of regulating these companies, thinking about the dynamic between the government and the, and the biggest companies in the world. I'll just ask the question more, I guess, more directly.

• 6:52Speaker 00

  Do you think Newsom was right to give in to Paramount? Or do you think he should have made them make good on that threat to leave?

• 6:59Speaker 02

  I can't speak to the Paramount situation well enough to, to give you an answer. And I, so it would be unfair for me to do so. I can say once again that our, you know, our orientation today, and I think about the, the big AI companies and the big social media companies as well. Our orientation really has to be like, wait a minute, too much power in too few hands. And particularly when we talk about AI, where it's potentially existential, but certainly transformative is probably a kind way to say it about the economy, that we're going to have to get very engaged. Guardrails, of course, on both parts, but also addressing what I think on the AI front

• 7:43Speaker 02

  is potentially a significant change in employment in the United States. And, you know, I'm not somebody who necessarily is convinced that we have to see a whole bunch of job loss. But that does feel like that's the direction this is going. And so what I'm suggesting is we better be prepared and we better be protecting people who are going to lose their jobs, or at least it appears they're going to lose their jobs. And I'll just give you this thought. If, if these days 4% unemployment is kind of the acceptable near full employment number, I think the problem we're going to see is if that's sort of the level

• 8:27Speaker 02

  that we're going to hopefully aim for and stay at, the problem may be that in very short order, we could end up at 7% and have that be the baseline and maybe 10%. And if you think about what's happened, you know, the upheavals of economies and of governments when you get to 10% unemployment in, in any country. We better be focused on how we're going to give people the dignity of work and enough income so that they can make a life for themselves when you're going to put people out of work by virtue of this technology. By the way, much of the benefit of that is going to go to a very, very few people. So we've got to wrestle with that and come to a conclusion.

• 9:10Speaker 00

  And I wanted to start with some of the brinksmanship we have seen in the negotiations between particularly states and the big companies, because that brinksmanship is real. The threat is we will leave. We just covered, I don't know, Kevin O'Leary in Utah, talking about data centers. And the people of Utah really pushed back against Kevin O'Leary building a data center. But his argument was, well, I'm just going to shop around, right? This is what states do. They compete with tax incentives and benefits, maybe for data centers, which will put everyone out of a job. They compete for land use rights. You've got a rural state with a lot of farms in it. How are you thinking about that dynamic, right? Do you feel like you're in competition with the other states? Or is this bipartisan realignment creating more of a level playground where these companies

• 9:55Speaker 00

  are going to have to actually give something?

• 9:57Speaker 02

  We are in competition. We just are because it isn't bipartisan, at least if you ask me. Unless there is a change in the government, I'll pick on Texas for a second. And there is a chance that you'll see a new governor in Texas as of November 3rd. In fact, a good chance. But if you look at Texas as it's run today by now a three-term, hoping to be a four-term Republican governor and a Republican legislature, they have no intention of, you know, changing their alignment about incentives. In the state of Illinois, we don't want to have to do that. I mean, we obviously want to protect the revenue that we've got for the state to pay for the things we think are valuable to our people. But we also want to make sure that we're attracting jobs and not losing jobs.

• 10:42Speaker 02

  And in a world where, you know, South Carolina, Michigan, Texas, Florida, you know, pick your poison, you know, Michigan, maybe slightly different just because it's got Democratic control. But these are our competitors. I mean, when I'm competing to have a company move to Illinois, you know, I've got to make sure, first of all, that I'm somewhere in the ballpark when it comes to the incentives. Because otherwise, we don't even get considered. And then, when I say somewhere in the ballpark, I mean, I want to give away less than more. And then I want to provide whatever other advantages I can that aren't financial so that I can protect the resources that we have. An example of that is, you know, we like to talk about kind of white glove service

• 11:27Speaker 02

  that we offer to companies. That is, if you're going to bring a factory here, let's say, just to give an example, we want to make sure that we've got somebody who's kind of a concierge for your company that's walking you through each of our departments where you need a permit. It doesn't mean we're lowering the standards. It just means, a lot of times, the bureaucracy eats up so much time, it makes it impossible for a company to actually do what they want to do in your state. We try to make sure that if we're going to attract a large company, 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 jobs, you know, that we're at least making it a little easier for them to go through without having to give them massive tax incentives. So that's the way I think about it. We are in competition. There's just no doubt about it. Should we be? There's a lot of discussion about we shouldn't.

• 12:12Speaker 02

  And maybe at the federal level, we should do something about leveling the playing field. But this is the world we're living in right now.

• 12:19Speaker 00

  I want to ask those questions just to set the baseline. I really do think something is happening, right? A lot of young people are dissatisfied with the status quo. A lot of people in general are dissatisfied with what big tech companies are trying to do with AI, with the potential for job loss. And the relationship between the people, the government, and those companies seems more fraught than ever, especially as they're trying to expand their physical infrastructure with data centers, especially as they all become defense contractors, literally taking our tax dollars to buy, to sell weapon systems and collect data for the government. That's a big swirl. I wanted to start there. But I just want to take one second here and ask you the decoder questions. Because I personally think the operation of government is so opaque.

• 13:04Speaker 00

  It's very easy to go figure out how big companies are run. The CEOs won't shut up. They're on podcasts all day long. I think most people have no idea how your job works. So you were elected governor. How is your office set up? And how have you structured the state government of Illinois?

• 13:19Speaker 02

  Just starting from where I sit, and then, of course, we look at it from a customer service perspective. But starting just at the top, I actually did something that no governor of Illinois has ever done, which is, I created not one deputy governor. We obviously have a lieutenant governor who's elected also. But, but a deputy governor is somebody getting appointed by me to serve under me to help manage the government with me. What I did was actually put four deputy governors in place, plus a general counsel and my chief of staff. Why is that important? Because what I've tried to do is to break down the silos of government and take all of the health and human services related departments.

• 14:04Speaker 02

  That's the Department of Public Health, the Department of Human Services, the Department of Healthcare and Family Services. So that's like, you know, everything from health insurance or, you know, Medicaid to just public health, like during the pandemic. And put it all under one deputy governor working directly for me. The idea is, instead of my having, let's say, 26 direct reports, I've got four or five direct reports, plus my chief of staff, who each have, let's say, six or seven departments underneath them. So that's the way I, from my perspective, what I wanted to do was make sure that I'm

• 14:46Speaker 02

  breaking down the silos of government, making these departments that often, they're basically building walls, and they don't want to talk to one another because they're afraid they might lose jobs in one department to another department, or lose control of a program if they're talking to one another. That's the way it used to be. Now, we're like, you know, the deputy governor is there to either beat the heads together, or at least bring them together so that they will be operating government more efficiently. Okay, so that's, again, from the top. From the bottom, which is, how do people who live in Illinois interact with state government? And obviously, technology is one of the, you know, the upgrades that's occurred and made it easier.

• 15:31Speaker 02

  Illinois frankly had not invested significantly before I became governor in those processes and frankly, the, you know, technology that was necessary. And I'll just give you one example of this. We created something called Beacon, which is designed to address the problem that parents have and families have with mental health for children. It turns out that there were like seven different ways in which people approached government to get help. And we weren't coordinating those, and we weren't helping give all of the resources. I'm talking about outside resources. You know, how do you find a therapist? How do you find a psychiatrist?

• 16:15Speaker 02

  How do you, and how do you pay for those things, right? Medicaid, if you can't afford it on your own. But the point is, there's one door to enter through Beacon that allows you to get access to all of those resources, even if they're in multiple departments. So that's just one example. We're trying to think of this as a customer service operation. So that, again, you know, it's one thing to say, this is how we're, you know, the org chart looks. And another thing to say, you know, this is how you access all the resources of government that you need. Because you know the thing that bothers me most? We provide programs that really matter to people. Like, we have a birth equity initiative to reduce maternal mortality, particularly in

• 16:59Speaker 02

  black and brown communities. And, and so we provide for some families, like, you know, free diapers for some people, free diapers, right? The, the problem is, people don't even know that program exists. And how would you ever figure out that the program exists if you're, especially if you're a working person who's working like two minimum wage jobs, right? You don't have any time, and you don't have any money, and you don't even know how to talk to government. And so we're trying to fix all of those problems of government with, you know, with the way that we interact with people.

• 17:35Speaker 00

  It's funny, it feels like that is one of the bigger opportunities when it comes to AI, just letting the AI navigate a bureaucracy for you and communicate what resources are available. The flip side of that is that people hate AI. They truly dislike it. And it doesn't feel like that connection has been made, that a lot of these tools can actually just navigate a bureaucracy for you. Are you, are you thinking that should be an investment that you make? That, that might be what turns the tide in terms of how people feel about these tools?

• 18:06Speaker 02

  Yes, but I'm not plunging headlong into it. You know, and I, and I realize that there are probably states that are plunging headlong into it.

• 18:15Speaker 00

  I mean, the United States government rolled out their, their AI chatbot to look at webpages across the government.

• 18:21Speaker 02

  Well, there you go. And I, I mean, I guess what I'm trying to do is make sure, and I created something that called the AI cabinet in my government. And that is, you know, to essentially bring the experts on AI together with the leaders of my mainstay agencies of state government. So that we're, we're thinking about privacy, we're thinking about safety, and we're thinking about efficiency. And those things have to be talked about together. You can't just say, we're, you know, we're going after efficiency, and we don't really care about the other two, you know? So that's the idea, the AI cabinet.

• 19:01Speaker 02

  It's also that, honestly, there are things, as you know, about AI that are dangerous. And so we've got our emergency management agency on that AI cabinet. We, you know, we've got our state police on that AI cabinet. Remember, a lot of the people that work in those agencies aren't particularly proficient at AI or really understand the potential and the potential dangers. So that's why we brought in experts, for example, from the University of Chicago, the University of Illinois, you know, just as two examples of places where we're drawing expertise. So, yeah, I mean, there's a lot to be done. I would say we're trying to approach it carefully before we, you know, get our, get out of, get

• 19:43Speaker 02

  it out of control and to a point where, you know, we have no way to pull it back in.

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• 24:12Speaker 03

  The other Decoder question I ask everybody is about decisions. You have a big job, you have some constraints in your decision-making process, right? There's a state legislature, there's a federal government. You have other agencies in your state. How do you make decisions? What's your framework?

• 24:25Speaker 02

  Well, I don't do it the way Donald Trump does.

• 24:29Speaker 02

  I should start with, because it's funny you say it that way. I mean, I start with the idea that we have a problem to solve and that decisions have to get made. Are those decisions ones that need to come to the governor? Because you're right, I only have so much bandwidth. And so the question is, which are the most serious ones that can't be solved by other people or are unlikely to get the outcomes that I would want by handing it over to other people? And then those automatically come to me. So what I'm making decisions about is kind of the first answer to your question. And then it's, how do I actually make the decisions?

• 25:11Speaker 02

  For me, I am not one of these people who thinks that I'm right 100% of the time. I mean, maybe a good way to describe it, and I'm joking a little bit when I say it, which is, I'm 90% sure I'm right. But there's also a 10% chance that I'm dead wrong. I want to make sure that I'm getting input and a debate before I actually make the final decision. So I like to, you know, someone once told me that the best CEOs are ones that, in their organization, they're a little bit below average in terms of their capability and intellect. That is, you're hiring so well, I'm not saying we want below-average leaders.

• 25:52Speaker 02

  I'm just saying you're so good at hiring that you've got people in your organization who are really far better than you are at various things that you're not particularly good at. Maybe know what you don't know and be willing to ask for help is a philosophy that I have. Be willing to ask for help if it's something you really don't know. And I'll be honest, when you become governor of a state, there are a whole lot of topics within the purview of a governor. And making decisions about all those topics, maybe a human being who has superintelligence might be able to do it. But most people don't start out knowing everything there is to know about public health

• 26:32Speaker 02

  and everything there is to know about public safety and everything there is to know about education. And so you start out with what you know and then try to add expertise to it and then make decisions based upon the best experts debating one another in front of you. At least, that's how I like to do it.

• 26:50Speaker 03

  Give me an example. Governor Kathy Hochul from New York was on the show. She said, in her first week, she needed to declare a state of emergency because of a hurricane, and she just didn't know how, which was very humanizing in its way. Give me an example of when you became governor and there was something where you just didn't know.

• 27:05Speaker 02

  COVID.

• 27:06Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 27:07Speaker 02

  I mean, honestly, no one runs for governor thinking there's going to be a global pandemic, right? You think you're going to solve education problems for people or put more money in people's pockets by raising the minimum wage or whatever. But COVID comes along. And I have to admit, the level of expertise of, I don't think, any governor, maybe Josh Green, the doctor who's the governor of Hawaii, maybe he had a lot to start with. But for the rest of us humans, you know, I really, that was one where, you know, we were learning on the job. We were working 18 hours a day. My entire team was all in.

• 27:49Speaker 02

  And we had to do things like procurement, emergency procurement of ventilators and masks. And we had to go outside the box. It's not like we could just put it through our central management services, look for a contract or whatever. This was like, I need masks in three days, you know? And I need, I'll tell you a quick story if you're interested about my interaction with Donald Trump at the time, because I think it's interesting, anyway. But, you know, I'm not a big fan of Donald Trump, in case you didn't know. I was one year into office when the COVID pandemic hit. And

• 28:32Speaker 02

  I had not, I mean, I talked to his administration, but not talked to him directly. I picked up the phone and called him and I said, Mr. President, uh, by the way, I wrote a script for myself because I know he likes to be flattered. So, and I'm not somebody who normally likes to flatter him, but I wrote a script for myself. I saved it, uh, even I have it today. Um, and I said, Mr. President, you know, you're a great businessman, um, but you can understand that paying, you know, eight dollars for a, an N95 mask that should cost us 75 cents i- is, we're in a national emergency. We need to be able to get these things and afford them. And I'm competing against all the other states, you know, we

• 29:15Speaker 02

  need to invoke the Defense Production Act in order to make sure that we're making enough masks in the United States. That's what I told him. And then I said, but I need masks right now. What can you do for me? I said, I need 2 million N95 masks and I need 4,000 ventilators. He never delivered, just so you know, um, even though he promised that he would deliver. Uh, you know, the, the, the challenges in COVID were mighty and, uh, the organization that we had to create around it, I had morning meetings every morning just on this topic, right? Um, figuring out, okay, how many hospital beds? We didn't have a system that would tell us statewide, how many hospital beds are available, um,

• 29:58Speaker 02

  in each region. You know, what happens if you have an outbreak, you know, and it really is overtaking some region? What do we do? These were all the things we had to learn on the fly. And all I can tell you is, once again, back to the hire great people to have around you. I really felt like I proved out that I had done a good job of hiring because the people around me were tremendous. One of whom, by the way, is now running as my Lieutenant Governor, uh, partner in this election.

• 30:28Speaker 00

  It's interesting you brought up COVID in the context of our conversation about, uh, generational political realignment. I would actually point to COVID is the beginning of a particular realignment around what the government should measure, how much control the government should have over people. And all of that has led, I think, directly into the bipartisan pushback against flock cameras. The very notion of privacy is not, in my mind, left, right anymore. The CEO of Flock got himself in all kinds of trouble because he kept saying, all the people wanted to ban flock camera criminals. And he would like go on MAGA media and say this. And I think that position was just rejected. We can see in states around the country, there's pushback against flock cameras. And I would point to COVID as the beginning of that, right? The idea that the government could be too

• 31:12Speaker 00

  intrusive. And in particular, the government should not be able to measure things, right? Like if you don't test, there won't be COVID, just became an idea. And the idea that we shouldn't measure things, or we should tear down our systems of measurement. It, it's a big part of, of the second Trump administration. But I see that privacy connection very clearly to COVID. In, in one world, the government coming together to protect its citizens and build a bunch of systems, it could have gone a very different way. In the one we live in, there's ferocious pushback to that, on the left and the right in some ways. How do you feel about privacy right now? I know Illinois kind of leads the nation. You've got the Biometric Identification Protection Act. Every time I fly to Chicago, I gotta

• 31:55Speaker 00

  push the button at the airport to say that it's okay to, to look at my face. That's one way of going about it. But then you do have, I think there are hundreds of flock cameras in Cook County alone. People have meta glasses with cameras in them. There's something happening with privacy that is running right into the aftershocks of COVID and how people feel about government intrusion. How are you finding a way through that balance?

• 32:18Speaker 02

  Well, and don't forget AI is, as you're suggesting, I mean, talk about a collision. This focus on privacy is warranted and, um, and long overdue, to be honest with you. I, I understand what you're describing about COVID, but I think something that came out of COVID got accelerated and that was conspiracy theories.

• 32:40Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 32:41Speaker 02

  Um, and, and I'm not suggesting that everything you hear now about the pushback around privacy is, is a conspiracy theory, but it, but it is easy for these things to spread and people have misinformation that's informing them, uh, about, you know, how these things are used. Having said that, uh, I guess what I, what I think is that, uh, we are having to solve multiple problems at the same time. And AI is coming. Let's just go to AI for a second. It's, it's here. I mean, I say it's coming. It's here. It's not going to stop. We're not going to become Luddites and there's not going to be any AI. So the question is, like, in the context of privacy, um, how are, what guardrails are

• 33:26Speaker 02

  we putting on AI? And how are we managing this idea that, you know, the president, uh, has, and David Sacks, you know, where they got all the companies together and said, hey, how about you guys self-police? You know, that's not going to work for, at least not for protecting people's privacy. And frankly, it's not going to provide any safety either, um, because everybody's going to operate in their own self-interest. Um, it's one of the reasons why you need government, in my view. I'm not suggesting government is any smarter than these companies, but one of the reasons you have any kind of collective action of government is because separately, uh, you know, as you know, you know, people operate because they operate in their own self-interest. I mean, you could have like

• 34:10Speaker 02

  a Hobbesian world where, where people are killing each other and there are no rules about it. Um, so, uh, so I think we've got to use government as a tool and also be smart within government. And that's where the generational change, I think, is hugely important. Use government as a, um, as a smarter, you know, less bureaucratic and smarter, uh, uh, collection of people devoted to protecting the privacy of everyone and making sure that we're addressing all the other challenges that come from AI. I guess I'll just say, I don't think we're anywhere near where we need to be, but I will say, if we don't have a federal government,

• 34:52Speaker 02

  now I've got a lot of, I'm very proud of the things that we've done here in Illinois around the, you know, the AI Safety Measures Act, which is the toughest in the country, the Children's Social Media Safety Act, uh, and so on. I think I'm proud of the work we've done, but state by state, this is not the way to, to do this. We're doing the best we can with an absence of a federal government that is addressing these. And when I say federal government, I'm not just pointing at Trump. Uh, I'm pointing at the Congress. No action on their part means that we're going at it alone. And right now, I don't know how many AI Safety Measures types acts have been passed, but it looks like three

• 35:35Speaker 02

  to me. I mean, you know, it's New York, California and Illinois, maybe that you could name a couple others, but you know, we're, we were the first and, I mean, we three, and yet, well, we got 47 other states. So this is, this worries me a great deal. Um, you're raising issues. I'd love to tell you, I have all the answers to it. I can tell you what we're trying to think of, think about is, uh, that we are the, you know, people sometimes say the states are laboratories of democracy. They're actually laboratories of policy, at least in Illinois. We're trying to use ourselves as a laboratory policy while not, uh, disadvantaging ourselves. That's a very challenging thing to do and why we need to change what's happening at the federal government.

• 36:18Speaker 00

  I want to just say focus on privacy for one second. And I, I understand what you're saying about AI. I think part of the privacy debate around flock cameras, for example, is, well, sure, you can have one license plate reader in one intersection. And if the cops had to go there and pull the SD card out of it and drive it back to headquarters and upload it to their Apple 2E and look at it manually, maybe people would feel one way about it. But those cameras are all networked. They don't have any access controls, really. There's an infinite reports of local police chiefs tracking their girlfriends across state lines with these cameras. You add in a system like Palantir, which can synthesize multiple databases and do all kinds of tracking across all kinds of systems. People see that,

• 37:00Speaker 00

  right? That is the, the term that is being made is that you can connect a lot of databases of information together and search them without a warrant and track people across the entire country. You could ban that state by state. You could regulate it by city by city, which we're seeing happen with Flock. And you could maybe have some federal controls around privacy there. None of it's really happening, but on the ground, people are ferociously pushing back. And that's the connection I'm making to, to COVID and conspiracy theories and how much power should the government have to surveil you and look at you. Something happened in there where people's attitudes about that really shifted. And, you know, I would say one of my core beliefs is that Americans do not like being told what to do. Party politics aside, Americans don't like being told what to do. And something

• 37:44Speaker 00

  about that flipped and connected to, we have a network of license plate reading cameras and we're going to tear them down when we see them, because there's something about that that offends us as Americans. Illinois does have privacy laws. You, I think you, the last update to the, the biometric law, you, you did in 2024. It's changed again. It's, it's gotten more vociferously opposed to tracking and surveillance in this country. Do you think you need another update to that privacy law?

• 38:11Speaker 02

  I think we should every year be looking at that question. I'll give you an example of it. We passed it. And again, I'm back to AI because I think what, what you're describing, I thought was a perfect way to say it. You know, if it was an SD card in the, you know, that they had to go grab and then analyze, you know, back at the station, it'd be a different thing. But, but it's AI that's operating these things and that's allowing this stuff to move instantaneously and, and track people. Um, I, you know, look, that, that, should we be addressing? Yeah, every year. I mean, it's, it's like the issue of ethics in government. You know, uh, what I mean is, the minute you put an ethics law

• 38:52Speaker 02

  in place, there's somebody who's trying to get around it. Every year, it's like every law, this is probably true across, you know, all of, uh, capitalism, maybe. Uh, you know, it's like people, there are always people trying to find a way around the law, put a tax law in place. Someone's trying to figure out how to get around it. And I think that this, the point you're making is that that's why you need to have proactively government, like less bureaucratically and more, uh, you know, you know, and more aggressively, um, trying to address these things. Are we going to be able to keep up with it? I'll be honest, I, I don't think so. And I also don't think you can say, well, we're just going to shut it all down because you're, you're, there are things you're missing out

• 39:36Speaker 02

  on. It's sort of like, and again, I, I keep going back to AI, but I think a lot about it. My children are 21 and 24. They're going to live to 100 or 110 years old.

• 39:48Speaker 02

  Because AI is going to solve a whole bunch of of medical challenges. And and already is. And we, you know, there's a cure now for sickle cell anemia. And, you know, and people who was would otherwise die at 25 or 30 years old are going to live full lives. This is going to happen across the board and cancer and everything else. So there's all good in there, right? And then there's the bad. And so I, I, I, I know what you're saying. I guess all I, all I can tell you is I'm a believer that we can progressively, I don't mean that in a political session, fashion, we can progressively address these challenges.

• 40:30Speaker 02

  Like in Illinois, we passed a law that, you know, that disallows AI, the use of AI in therapy for people. Because we think too much information gets collected, not enough humanity in the process. And we think that, you know, it should, it should have humanity in it. And, and so I'm not, again, we're not like trying to shut it down across the board, but there are, we're going to have to see how it gets used and where it's improper. You know, and I know that sounds imperfect because the technology is moving so fast that the idea that we're going to be able to keep up with all the ways in which someone's privacy could be breached seems, you know, very difficult.

• 41:14Speaker 02

  But I don't know any other way to do it. I mean, we, that, that we have, that's why you have government. And maybe in the end, we're going to have this competing use of things like AI where AI is monitoring AI. And, you know, AI that's kind of privacy friendly or focused on privacy is going to be monitoring the AI that's not. But again, I know you don't mean to just, you don't want to just talk about AI. I am concerned. I think that, I mean, this issue of privacy has been around for a long time. We've been, you know, you've been talking about, I'm sure I've been talking about it since before AI, right? This is like, everybody giving over their personal information in exchange for access to something. And that was happening for a while.

• 41:57Speaker 02

  And then, you know, we're all getting like ads that are personalized to us based upon stuff that essentially we've given up privacy for.

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• 45:08Speaker 00

  No, it's funny, I mean, people believe, whether or not, we can write as many stories as we want about what your iPhone is not actually listening to you, but the ad tracking is so good that everyone believes their iPhones are listening to them. The next turn is that it is now technologically feasible for these systems to listen to you all the time. And I, I can't fall back on, you know, it's cheaper for them to do the ad tracking when you hit I accept than to listen to you all the time, which was, you know, for a decade, the right answer. Like, the economically correct answer was the ad tracking was cheaper than listening to you all the time. That might be very different in the future. There are already devices that we cover here at The Verge that purport to listen to you all the time and turn that into some actionable data.

• 45:47Speaker 00

  And it, it feels to me like the, the tech industry is trying to drive a truck through our privacy law, through our lack of AI regulations, through an entire system of governance that is designed for the pre-AI era. Right? The notion that you don't have privacy in public really worked well when everyone didn't have a cellphone that could connect to the cloud and instantly search every photo all at once, all the time, and do facial recognition. We live in that world now. I would say like the public sentiment towards the idea that you don't have privacy in public places has turned. Right? They don't like the meta glasses. They call them pervert glasses for a reason. And somewhere in there is, well, the federal government should pass a privacy law.

• 46:30Speaker 00

  It is a failure of imagination in the United States, we don't have a federal privacy law. And then somewhere in there is the notion that the states are laboratories of democracy and policy. It is amazing, by the way, how often on this tech and business show, Thomas Hobbes comes up, and the very notion that the government is there to serve as an extension of us solving collective action problems, it comes up over and over again, because I think the tech industry does not want to respect that dynamic. This is why I started with that relationship between government and business, and the pushback and the negotiation. Because here it feels like the tech industry is in a bubble of its own making, truly in a media bubble of its own making. And then all of the polling is, well, we hate AI, in particular, young people hate AI.

• 47:13Speaker 00

  And then all of the action is around data centers, where NIMBYism, the most American of policy lovers, is being pulled to keep these data centers out of communities. And that's one way to stop AI. There are, you just pulled back on data center taxes incentives in July. You're pushing the state legislature to adopt a suite of guarantees on reforms for new constructions. Do you think data centers and the pushback on data centers is an effective route towards AI regulation?

• 47:41Speaker 02

  I don't. I, I think it's an effective route toward data center regulation. I mean, I know that people have conflated, you know, and put together their opposition to data centers with their opposition to AI. And a lot of people can't describe why they're opposed to one or the other, and because they're conflated with one another. But I can say that, I mean, at least our aim is focused on the idea, and people really feel this, right? I mean, and there's real data to back this up, that the data centers themselves put aside what they're doing inside a data center. The data centers, you know, and what's happening, are eating up the available electricity,

• 48:24Speaker 02

  and that's causing your electric bill to go up. At least that's how everybody feels. There are a lot of things that we should have been doing in many years gone by to get to a point where electricity bills shouldn't have to go up now. And, you know, that has to do with building out the grid, which, you know, we, you know, it's, it's a world where your regulation and, you know, cross-border challenges have made it near impossible for a lot of the grid to get built the way that it should have. We produce a lot more electricity in the United States than we use, but we just don't transport it well enough. And we would have a lot more available if we transported it better.

• 49:05Speaker 02

  Okay, but even if you think that can't happen efficiently, we need to build more on the grid, that is, more capacity on the grid. My only point is, the opposition to data centers is in part a result of the economic situation that's happening right now in the country, where electric bills, gas, everything at rent, you know, everything has gone up, and your electric bill shows up every month, and it continues to go up, and people kind of scratch their heads and say, what, why am I paying, who am I paying for? This is happening, and this, in particular, to Illinois. Very, we're not going to have a whole discussion about energy policy, but I could just say

• 49:50Speaker 02

  this, we produce more nuclear power in the state of Illinois than any other state. 53 or 4% of our electricity comes from nuclear power. And we're a net electricity exporter, so we have an excess in Illinois. But our bills are going up in Illinois, and that's because of, you know, the methodology of the regional transmission organizations. Again, not to get in all the detail of it, but essentially, if Ohio decides to build a, a hyperscale data center, our bills in Illinois are affected.

• 50:26Speaker 02

  And that's, you know, that's shocking to people who live in Illinois. But what they know is they don't want their bill to go up, so they don't want another data center nearby, even though the one in Ohio is actually causing the problem, even if you choose to oppose data centers. So this is a challenge. I mean, I think there's a lot of information that needs to be spread, but most of all, we just need a whole lot more capacity and a whole lot more grid that will, I think, subside some of the concern about data centers. But to your point, I mean, privacy is, I think, more related to AI, obviously, than like, you know, data centers. It's not just AI, but, but the way AI is used.

• 51:10Speaker 02

  So we're going to have a lot of opposition. You're pointing, I mean, you, you make an excellent point. I think this feeling of being out of control, you are not in control of your environs anymore. That's the thing that is causing anxiety. I want to go back to something really important that I was saying earlier. We need better people running for public office. We need smarter policy development in government. And part of that is a generational shift that's needed and a better understanding. We have people that are like serving in the United States Senate who have no idea, like, what was it, the Secretary of Education, Trump's Secretary of Education, who called it A1.

• 51:55Speaker 02

  We've got old, you know, older people who don't have any exposure, who are making policy theoretically on these things. And it's, it's, I mean, it should disturb us all. It's one of the reasons we've got to advance the cause of better people and better systems in government.

• 52:12Speaker 00

  We are on the cusp of an election. There, there might be a new Congress. There might be new leadership in Congress. There are a bunch of old Democrats, too. In fact, I could probably point directly to Joe Biden's age in the last election is the reason that he lost. Do you think that you need a wholesale change of leadership of, of the older Democrats as well?

• 52:30Speaker 02

  You said, do we need a wholesale change? I mean, I can tell you that I don't think we should.

• 52:34Speaker 00

  I live in New York. I'll just ask you, do you think Chuck Schumer should be the Senate Majority Leader if, if the Democrats take the Senate?

• 52:38Speaker 02

  That's a decision people in the Senate are going to make. I have no influence over it. I can tell you this, I am opposed to term limits. Because I think that you should have all the choices. You're a voter. If you want to vote for the 75-year-old, I mean, go ahead. I'm just suggesting that a great case can be made for the 45-year-old, who's just as smart as the 75-year-old was when he was 45 or whatever, or maybe is now, but, but has a modern look at the issues around AI privacy and everything else we're discussing. And, and has a more aggressive view of how we ought to be reining in big corporations

• 53:21Speaker 02

  in their invasion of our lives. But I think people ought to make their own choices. I mean, for us to say, well, we should have an age limit, you know, you're 70, that's it, you know, you're out. I, I really, I think that belies who we are as a democracy.

• 53:39Speaker 00

  Well, you convinced me. I'm 46. I'm announcing my run for president here with you, Governor. It's, that was a rousing speech.

• 53:45Speaker 02

  Listen, I would vote for you in a second if the choice was you and Donald Trump.

• 53:48Speaker 00

  A low bar, but I'm glad I crossed it. Uh, let me tie two ideas together at the end. We've talked a lot about AI regulation. You mentioned social media regulation a little bit earlier in this conversation. I know that Illinois has a, a social media law. You have a bell-to-bell ban on phones in, in schools for kids. I'm just going to pick on Mark Zuckerberg. It's easy to pick on Mark Zuckerberg. If you look at how he talks about social media regulation, he basically describes the tragedy of the commons, right? He signed the landmark settlement with, with him. I think Illinois is due to get 750, 760 million dollars on that settlement. And a big part of it is TikTok and YouTube have to agree to the same terms and then Meta will pay the rest of the money. And Zuckerberg very clearly has said, that's because if Instagram falls back on engagement

• 54:33Speaker 00

  bait and TikTok doesn't, the kids will just use TikTok. And so the government has to get everyone to agree. I will tell you that Neil Mohan, the CEO of YouTube, does not agree. He's not going to sign on to this. That's one whole fight. You look at how Mark Zuckerberg talks about AI regulation, there's none of that dynamic at all. He's like, it should be a free for all. We'll all compete. If it's not safe, the market will tell us, we'll be fine. And in my mind, these ideas are at total odds with each other, right? In, in the market where he makes all the money, the government has to step in and stop him from, from hurting kids, because apparently there's no market demand for safe social media. And in the market where the AI CEOs are telling us they might kill us all if we don't stop them, it's a free for all and the market will tell us if, if they accidentally kill everybody.

• 55:18Speaker 00

  How do you reconcile those things? Are you just happy that you got the social media case done after a decade of failing to regulate social media? Or do you think you can solve, solve AI with regulation this time instead of letting it just cook?

• 55:31Speaker 02

  Look, I'm an optimist at heart. I think that, so I'm, I'm, I'm not going to suggest to you that I know absolutely that we can solve all the problems that we're now facing. But I, I, I don't know what else that we can do. You know, I mean, I, I, other than to, again, progressively make sure that we're trying to address each of these things, trying to anticipate them to the extent we can. Can we be faster than the AI is developing? I don't know. We can't stop trying, I know that. And I would suggest to you that my optimism is founded because I think the vast majority of people want what you're describing, which is reining it in.

• 56:16Speaker 02

  And again, without destroying companies, that's not, I don't think we're all trying to do that. What we're trying to do is, you know, stop the invasion into our homes, stop the invasion into our children's lives. I do think we can do that, but that's because we've solved a whole lot of huge problems. You know, that's kind of like my answer to the, is AI potentially existential? The answer, of course, is yes. And can we solve it? I don't know. You know, nuclear weapons, I mean, just to give something of an analogy to something else, I mean, nuclear weapons, they're still hanging over us as a danger to humanity.

• 56:57Speaker 02

  So far, anyway, we've managed not to blow up the world. I don't know whether that gives you any optimism, but it does to me. We, as a country, can figure out how we want to rein it in here, that we, as a country, can work with our allies to figure out how we want to collectively try to rein it in. And then we have enemies in the world and, and, you know, competitors in the world, and we've got to figure out how we're going to, maybe it's mutually assured destruction like it was with, with nuclear weapons. You know, these are all things we're going to have to work on and work on fast. And it's scary because someone analogized this to, I mean, think about the, you know,

• 57:41Speaker 02

  the early 1950s, when every kid had to learn, you know, that if there was a, you know, a nuclear blast, you know, atomic bomb, you know, get under your desk. I mean, that wouldn't have been very effective, but, but the point is, people lived with the idea that like terrible Holocaust could occur, you know, with a, a nuclear, you know, explosion that could happen. And so I, I think we're heading into that world again with AI. So, you know, that's, I hope I didn't stray too much from your question.

• 58:15Speaker 00

  Well, let me ask you this. It's kind of, it's a little bit of a wild card at the end. We cover this industry so closely here. And, you know, the big difference with nuclear weapons is there weren't five companies building bleeding-edge nuclear weapons in private capacity, led by five guys who all hated each other. But that's the dynamic of the AI industry. They all truly hate each other. They're all trying to make as much money as they can, as fast as they can. And then some of them think the AI is alive, right? If you ask Anthropic, and we've done this, is Claude alive? They don't say no, right? They will argue with you about the definition of alive and suggest that, to them, alive means having a biological component. And Claude doesn't have that, but it might be conscious, right?

• 59:00Speaker 00

  There's a race to build AGI in the industry. Some people truly believe they're building alien minds that have a different kind of consciousness. I'm not sure any government at any level has ever had to regulate that, has ever come up against an industry that is religious about the fact that it might be building the next kind of intelligence. Where do you stand? Do you think that they're building a next kind of consciousness that stands along humans? Or do you think that this is normal technology as some others do?

• 59:27Speaker 02

  Boy, that is really another podcast for us. But, but I'll, I'll just say this one thing. I, I just want to disagree with you for a second.

• 59:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 59:35Speaker 02

  Nobody ever could imagine a nuclear weapon either.

• 59:38Speaker 00

  Right, but the government built nuclear weapons.

• 59:40Speaker 02

  I understand. I'm not suggesting it's the same. I'm suggesting it's so new, right? At the time that, that, you know, figuring out how you're going to like rein it in, because remember, it's not just one government. And the same thing with AI, it's not just those five guys either, right? I mean, it's like, there's somebody in China, you know, maybe five of those, I don't know, and somebody in Europe or whatever. I mean, you could say we're ahead or they're ahead, I don't know. But all I'm saying is, yeah, this is a proliferated situation and it's not government-controlled. A hundred percent, you're right, it's not like nuclear weapons in that sense. But it is like nuclear weapons in the sense of, nobody's ever seen it before, it's a

• 1:00:25Speaker 02

  complete mystery to start with, how are we going to rein it in? I mean, nobody thought Russia was going to get the bomb and they got it. We've figured out somehow how to deal with it. Again, you got to be an optimist to believe we can end up with the right solution here. I don't know, you know, that we have the answer to, how do we rein it in? I will say, though, if we had the power to create it, we, we have the power, in my view, to rein it in. Is it conscious? You're, you're asking a.

• 1:00:55Speaker 00

  Yeah. Have you felt the AGI?

• 1:00:57Speaker 02

  Deep question. I mean, do you think it's conscious? Because I, I mean, I understand why people think it, it might have consciousness, or it's going to be conscious. But, but I think that's why the ethicists need to be involved and it's why I think technologists need to be involved and especially, in my view, government's got to be involved. Because how else are you going to rein in the five guys, you know, and the companies that, that have developed this? I, there is no other way.

• 1:01:28Speaker 00

  I will tell you, I, I don't think it's conscious. And every now and again, you have an experience where it's blindingly clear why other people believe that. When you watch a reasoning model take 90 steps over an hour and arrive at a conclusion, it's impressive and you can see why people believe that. I do not. And I have a lot of reasons for that. It just occurs to me that if you were to set out to regulate a technology like this, if you believe one thing, you would maybe go down one path. And if you believe that you were building a consciousness, you might go down another. And I don't, again, that whole industry itself does not agree

• 1:02:09Speaker 00

  on this. Jensen Huang and Dario Moda do not agree on whether it's alive. Jensen just wants to sell a bunch of chips and he will happily tell you it's just technology and you can control it. And I think Dario thinks he's building AGI. And that's a different, there's a whole reason he proposes different kinds of regulatory structures there. I'm just asking you, have you felt the AGI? Do you think it's one path or the other?

• 1:02:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm not going to give you a satisfactory yes or no.

• 1:02:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm curious.

• 1:02:33Speaker 02

  I mean, I haven't felt it. I guess that's what I'm, my basic answer is I haven't felt it.

• 1:02:37Speaker 00

  Governor Presser, this was very fun. Thank you for indulging this last existential loop of a question. You're gonna have to come back to Decoder soon.

• 1:02:43Speaker 02

  I would like to do that. Thanks, Neil.

• 1:02:45Speaker 00

  Thank you so much.

• 1:02:48Speaker 00

  To get new episodes every Monday and Thursday, subscribe to our YouTube channel at DecoderPod and find us on TikTok and Instagram under at DecoderPod for more fun stuff we put out almost every day. If you enjoyed this episode, please send a link to it to someone you think you might like it. It really helps us grow the show. You can also subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Decoder is part of the Boxing the Verge and part of the Boxing the Podcast Network. The show's producers are Greg Ott, Kate Cox, and Nick Statt. This episode was edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. We'll see you next time.

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• 1:03:48Speaker 03

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