“Still Many senators don’t even use email — if you don’t even use email, how would you understand some of these other tools? We need people who are working for the office to understand these things. “
That’s the call from Will Hurd, former congressman and author of Rebooting America: An Idealist’s Guide to Getting Great Things Done, transparent WIRED’s virtual CES HQ on Wednesday. Hurd advocates for cybersecurity, privacy, and responsible AI issues during his congressional term from 2015 to 2021. And in a conversation with WIRED this week, he stressed the need for responsible AI. U.S. government and state and local legislatures across the country to advance their understanding of the role technology plays in the face of misinformation, data abuse, and emerging technologies like AI today. more and more influential on domestic and geopolitical issues.
A year after the January 6, 2021, uprising on the Capitol, Hurd says the United States is no more prepared than 12 months ago to deal with the ways in which disinformation spreads on social media platforms. and cause violence.
“I don’t think we should be better prepared to prevent that kind of insurrection from happening, nor are we better prepared to deal with an insurgency if it happens,” he told WIRED. “As Congress reviewed and provided details on how to use these tools, we haven’t seen much progress since. It was too much of a partisan war. … We were unable to have a sober conversation about how these tools are being used to radicalize people. ”
Hurd believes that platforms need to continue to expand their community standards and enforcement policies. He discussed the importance of developing clear, fair accountability policies, perhaps similar to those for journalists and television networks. And he highlighted the challenge in the United States in dealing with disinformation and conspiracy theories now that they have captured so much of the public discourse.
“These messages and outright misinformation, misinformation and lies are being promoted and exaggerated by society, and so a handful of elected officials will not address the broad problem,” he said. bigger last,” he said. “We need to educate people on how to use these tools and to be able to separate fact from fiction.”
Hurd says the stakes are high both in the US and internationally. He noted that adversaries like China and Russia are adept at weaponizing disinformation against the American public and have fanned the flames of conspiracy theories.
“Our adversaries are taking advantage of some of these fissures to undermine our standing in the rest of the world,” he said.
Of course, Hurd notes, little if any necessary change is likely unless Congress can overcome its ideological polarization to introduce long overdue legislation. If the US acts so slowly on social media platforms that have been around for more than a decade, it doesn’t appear to be well prepared for the challenges to come, from supermarkets to cryptocurrencies to to the popularity of AI.
