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From the Valley to D.C., Big Tech players like Facebook, Google and Amazon are under more scrutiny than ever as new technology develops and privacy and antitrust concerns grow in lockstep with companies’ ambitions.

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Meet The Press-11 10 32 Am - 11 11 25 Am-2023-03-26

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox (R) said Sunday that his state's new first-of-its-kind legislation that restricts children and teens from using social media without their parents' consent are not expected to be "foolproof." 

Driving the news: Cox said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that his administration is working with social media companies to implement the legislation, which was passed Thursday, but he also acknowledged the potential for roadblocks. 

"We don’t think it’s going to be foolproof, there’s no question about that," Cox said Sunday.

"But we are working with social media companies, again, over the course of the year, we will be going through a rule-making process to figure out what that’s going to look like," he added. 

He called on Congress to implement laws regulating social media. "But the states have to lead out," he said, adding that he "expects other states to follow." 

The big picture: Under one of the laws, which is set to take effect March 1, 2024, social media companies will have to set a curfew for minors in Utah, preventing them from using their accounts from 10:30pm to 6:30am.

It also requires companies to give a parent or guardian access to their child’s accounts.

Cox said that the legislation could face "enforcement issues" and confront other legal challenges, but he said he feels "confident" that the law will overcome any potential challenges.

"We understand that there are definitely going to be enforcement issues, anytime you wade into this type of an industry. It’s going to be tough," he said.

Go deeper... Social media's effects on teen mental health come into focus

Social media's effects on teen mental health comes into focus

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Utah governor: Social media law limiting minors' access not "foolproof"

"We understand that there are definitely going to be enforcement issues, anytime you wade into this type of an industry."

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President Biden has made the COVID-19 crisis and a post-Trump return to national unity and traditional democratic ideals his top priorities. From vaccinations to stimulus to schools, Biden is seeking bipartisan compromise while showing a willingness to use executive authority and bare Democratic majorities in the U.S. House and Senate to implement his policies. Republican leaders are navigating deep party divisions over if and how to move beyond former President Trump.

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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's (D-N.Y.) first and only TikTok video has gone viral — and in it, she outlines her case against banning the Chinese-owned social media app as its fate hangs in the balance.

Why it matters: With more than 150 million monthly active users in the U.S., TikTok is one of the most popular smartphone apps in the country. Lawmakers are pressing forward with bipartisan efforts to facilitate a ban in the U.S. amid scrutiny surrounding the firm's relationship with the Chinese government. 

State of play: Critics have highlighted the fact that Chinese law requires China's companies to share information with the government.

TikTok has repeatedly said it operates independently and works with Oracle to ensure its algorithms and content moderation models aren't manipulated by Chinese authorities.

What she's saying: The video begins with Ocasio-Cortez listing concerns about Chinese surveillance. She then says that the discussion "doesn't really address the core of the issue, which is the fact that major social media companies are allowed to collect troves of people's personal data."

Adding that the U.S. is one of the "only developed nations in the world" without data privacy protection laws, she argues that the solution is not to ban an individual company but to "actually protect Americans from this kind of egregious data harvesting that companies can do without your significant ability to say no."

She also pointed out that the U.S. has never banned a social media company from operating within its borders, and that Congress hasn't received a classified briefing on potential risks even though that's protocol when it comes to national security issues.

"This case needs to be made to the public," she says. "Our first priority should be in protecting your ability to exist without social media companies harvesting and commodifying every single piece of data about you without you and without your consent."

The big picture: Ocasio-Cortez is one of several progressive members of Congress mounting a defense of the app. Her video garnered over 2.2 million views in 15 hours.

Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) has similarly raised concern about banning a hugely popular app without more information.

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, who faced a public grilling in a congressional hearing this week, has said that a ban would not provide any more protection than TikTok's current plan, which makes U.S. user data accessible only via Oracle Cloud and the firm's American data security team.

Go deeper: TikTok's fate may be decided by the courts

TikTok's fate may be decided by the courts

AOC goes viral on TikTok with video against banning app

The solution is not to ban an individual company, she says in the video, which gained over 2.2 million views in 15 hours.

Photo of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in a pink coat standing outside the U.S. Capitol

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez attends a news conference outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 26, 2023. Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

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After a record economic expansion, the coronavirus pandemic sent the U.S. economy into a recession as unemployment soared to staggering heights. The country now faces urgent questions about how much stimulus is needed for reeling consumers and businesses, and what a recovery might look like.

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China is becoming the most formidable rival America has faced, and the risk of confrontation with Russia, North Korea or Iran still looms. Authoritarians are rising, the chaotic Afghanistan exit revealed the limits of U.S. power, and the pandemic, climate change and other critical challenges continue to pose grave threats.

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Psychologists and behavioral scientists are beginning to study how using sophisticated new AI-driven text and image generators affects human creativity, judgment and decision-making.

The big picture: GPT and other generative AIs have been described as job decimators and productivity superchargers. Scientists and developers are poking, prodding, exposing and comparing the capabilities and weaknesses of these tools. But there are equally important questions about exactly how they could affect our own skills and capabilities.

The possibility of more sophisticated AI in the workplace raises an array of questions about its impact on human judgment and decision-making. Those include:

Creativity: With its confident but frequently false statements, generative AI, especially those that create images, may have more to offer in fields where one answer isn't required and a range of possibilities is acceptable or even desirable.

In that sense, it could be "a launchpad for creativity," my Axios colleague Ina Fried writes.

AI could also redefine productivity in the workplace, says Tara Behrend, who studies industrial-organizational psychology at Purdue University.

“If anyone can sneeze out 300 words with Chat GPT, maybe saying something original becomes productivity."

"It is going to produce cliches, and cliches aren’t actually valuable." 

But the bar for creativity or originality is subjective, and it could be unclear what is considered creative — for people and for AIs.

Influence: The people around us can sway our decisions and conclusions. 

As AI enters the workplace, a big question is: "What are the social influences that are likely to happen working with ChatGPT?" says Gaurav Suri, an experimental psychologist and computational neuroscientist at San Francisco State University.

"Most people are not using it that way now, but I think that issue is coming."

He points to a classic experiment about how people conform: Social psychologist Muzafer Sherif carried out experiments in the 1930s about social norms and conformity using what's known as the autokinetic effect. If someone is placed in a dark room and shown a light, it appears to jump despite being stationary.

Sherif asked study subjects — individually and then in groups — to estimate how far the light appeared to move.

He found that in a group, people used other people's estimates to refine their own — they conformed.

"How does this process change if we interact with an artificial agent in the same way as talking with fellow human beings?" Suri asks. 

"Would that interaction partner change the degree to which people stand behind an idea?" 

Trust: When asked whether someone prefers a decision be made with the judgment of a human or an algorithm, most people say they prefer humans.

So far, people seem to have "a general distrust for machines and algorithms," says Chiara Longoni, a behavioral scientist at Boston University.

But when people are asked about using human or algorithmic judgment to make specific predictions, they use algorithmic advice more than human advice, says Jennifer Logg of Georgetown University, citing results from a 2019 study with her colleagues and a series of studies in an unpublished working paper she co-authored. The findings support earlier research.

Longoni poses the question: "How will the interaction with these highly sophisticated models change our perception of AI?"

Researchers are also interested in whether a conversation with a chatbot can provide inspiration like a chat with a colleague can, and whether co-creating with AI changes how meaningful work can feel, which Longoni is  studying.

What to watch: If generative AI tools affect critical thinking, learning how to work with them — including how to prompt them to get the desired information — could become a new job skill on resumes.

The bottom line:  “Asking how ChatGPT is changing the human response to things, that’s the brave new world," Suri says.

Editor's note: This story has been updated to clarify that Logg and her colleagues reported their results about how people use algorithmic advice in a 2019 study as well as in the unpublished working paper.

How AI might change our judgment and decision-making

Scientists are studying how  generative AI could affect our own skills and capabilities.

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Artificial Intelligence

A look at the scientific breakthroughs changing the world, explorations in space and in worlds beyond our own and the threats posed to us by our own planet, both out of our control and of our own making.

Sunday's technology stories

Utah governor: Social media law limiting minors' access not "foolproof"

AOC goes viral on TikTok with video against banning app

How AI might change our judgment and decision-making