{"id":23401,"date":"2026-08-19T13:03:27","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T13:03:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scannn.com\/whats-the-right-balance-in-regulating-ai\/"},"modified":"2026-08-19T13:03:27","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T13:03:27","slug":"whats-the-right-balance-in-regulating-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scannn.com\/lv\/whats-the-right-balance-in-regulating-ai\/","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s the Right Balance in Regulating AI?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div dir=\"auto\">\n<div class=\"captioned-image-container\">\n<figure><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!HhvB!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2a2fa75e-2df5-4112-b4dc-360d33a01bb4_1536x1024.png\" data-component-name=\"Image2ToDOM\" class=\"image-link image2 is-viewable-img can-restack\"><\/p>\n<div class=\"image2-inset\"><picture><source type=\"image\/webp\" srcset=\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!HhvB!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2a2fa75e-2df5-4112-b4dc-360d33a01bb4_1536x1024.png 424w, https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!HhvB!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2a2fa75e-2df5-4112-b4dc-360d33a01bb4_1536x1024.png 848w, https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!HhvB!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2a2fa75e-2df5-4112-b4dc-360d33a01bb4_1536x1024.png 1272w, https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!HhvB!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2a2fa75e-2df5-4112-b4dc-360d33a01bb4_1536x1024.png 1456w\" sizes=\"100vw\"\/><\/picture><\/div>\n<p><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>I don\u2019t normally do politics content, but Bethany Andres-Beck\u2019s team reached out to me. After a brief screening conversation, I thought it would be an interesting opportunity to talk about AI, regulation, and politics. <\/p>\n<p><span>Bethany has worked as a software engineer at BAE Systems, TripAdvisor, Twitter, and more. They also served as the tech lead for building Hillary for America\u2019s donation platform. Beth is a well-known figure in the Agile\/Extreme Programming world and helped coin frameworks like <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/martinfowler.com\/bliki\/ForestAndDesert.html\">Forest and Desert<\/a><span>. While most politicians seem to have very little understanding of AI\u2014or technology in general\u2014Beth has been working in it for years and has a more considered stance than the knee-jerk anti-AI positions that have been a staple of recent campaigns.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>This is not an endorsement, and I\u2019d encourage readers who disagree with Beth\u2019s politics (Democratic candidate, DSA member) to engage with the ideas more than the labels. Part of the reason I took the interview is to examine the nuances of policy more.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>The piece also isn\u2019t an endorsement of the policies. I do have my own opinions in a long-stalled draft, but I think the interview is a good opportunity to explore the question with someone who\u2019s seeking public office and needs to both think about what to propose and balance AI\u2019s public unpopularity.<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p><strong>Robot Tax.<\/strong><span> The definition of \u201crobot\u201d matters less than the tax code substantially advantaging automation at a tax rate of ~5% vs. human workers at ~21%. [<\/span><strong>30:35]<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>Don\u2019t let the government pick models.<\/strong><span> Beth is a DSA member but surprisingly doesn\u2019t support the government dictating what models to use. Partly from Beth\u2019s background in technology platforms and open source. [<\/span><strong>34:49]<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>Liability regimes are key to responsible technology use.<\/strong><span> Suggests consumer-protection law plus a named human responsible for every deployment. [<\/span><strong>35:55]<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>Disagrees with golden shares in OpenAI\/Anthropic.<\/strong><span> Asked about <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sanders.senate.gov\/op-eds\/the-public-should-own-half-of-the-big-a-i-companies\/\">Bernie\u2019s plan<\/a><span>, <\/span><em>\u201ca terrible idea\u2026 Amtrak is nobody\u2019s favorite train company in the world.\u201d<\/em><span> [<\/span><strong>42:08]<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>If it\u2019s possible, suggests a government foundational model that everyone distills from.<\/strong><span> Housed at something like the Library of Congress\u2014explicitly conditional on general pretraining\/post-training economically evolving into a natural monopoly. [<\/span><strong>43:38]<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>AI company monopolies are what we should be guarding against.<\/strong><span> The story looks similar to software. Once a monopoly without alternatives emerges, it can easily reprice 10x or more without fear of consequences. Brings up examples in software. [<\/span><strong>40:48]<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>It\u2019s less left vs. right relative to urban vs. rural, given where data centers are being placed.<\/strong><span> \u201cI think this is where the public movement comes in\u2014the fact that you\u2019ll have 2,000 people show up at a meeting against data centers. No one has ever, that I know of, had two thousand people show up at a meeting about self-driving cars anywhere, much less like every town in America, you can get that.\u201d <\/span><strong>[47:27] <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div class=\"captioned-image-container\">\n<figure><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!-JbZ!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F33029ce6-f63a-4fd9-a6f0-8acc5d9d407e_2400x1820.png\" data-component-name=\"Image2ToDOM\" class=\"image-link image2 is-viewable-img can-restack\"><\/p>\n<div class=\"image2-inset\"><picture><source type=\"image\/webp\" srcset=\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!-JbZ!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F33029ce6-f63a-4fd9-a6f0-8acc5d9d407e_2400x1820.png 424w, https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!-JbZ!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F33029ce6-f63a-4fd9-a6f0-8acc5d9d407e_2400x1820.png 848w, https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!-JbZ!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F33029ce6-f63a-4fd9-a6f0-8acc5d9d407e_2400x1820.png 1272w, https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!-JbZ!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F33029ce6-f63a-4fd9-a6f0-8acc5d9d407e_2400x1820.png 1456w\" sizes=\"100vw\"\/><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!-JbZ!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F33029ce6-f63a-4fd9-a6f0-8acc5d9d407e_2400x1820.png\" width=\"1456\" height=\"1104\" data-attrs=\"{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com\/public\/images\/33029ce6-f63a-4fd9-a6f0-8acc5d9d407e_2400x1820.png&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:1104,&quot;width&quot;:1456,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:null,&quot;bytes&quot;:166934,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image\/png&quot;,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:false,&quot;topImage&quot;:false,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/weightythoughts.com\/i\/211752246?img=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F33029ce6-f63a-4fd9-a6f0-8acc5d9d407e_2400x1820.png&quot;,&quot;isProcessing&quot;:false,&quot;align&quot;:null,&quot;offset&quot;:false}\" alt=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!-JbZ!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F33029ce6-f63a-4fd9-a6f0-8acc5d9d407e_2400x1820.png 424w, https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!-JbZ!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F33029ce6-f63a-4fd9-a6f0-8acc5d9d407e_2400x1820.png 848w, https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!-JbZ!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F33029ce6-f63a-4fd9-a6f0-8acc5d9d407e_2400x1820.png 1272w, https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!-JbZ!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F33029ce6-f63a-4fd9-a6f0-8acc5d9d407e_2400x1820.png 1456w\" sizes=\"100vw\" class=\"sizing-normal\"\/><\/picture><\/div>\n<p><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p><em>Lightly edited for readability. Timestamps relate to the published video.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>[00:12]<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>[00:12] JAMES:<\/strong><span> Hi, everyone. I am pleased today to be joined by Beth Andres-Beck, running for the House in Massachusetts\u2019 6th Congressional District. I think this is a particularly interesting conversation because I don\u2019t normally cover politics, but Beth is a software engineer, knows tech, and isn\u2019t just knee-jerk anti-AI. I thought it would be interesting to talk about what\u2019s going on on the campaign trail, how Beth has been thinking about these particular topics, and get a sense of where things are in the political field. Beth, I\u2019d love it if you would introduce yourself to the audience.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>[00:47] BETH:<\/strong><span> Absolutely. My name is Bethany Andres-Beck. I\u2019ve spent more than 20 years working in the field, from self-driving cars and computer vision work back in the aughts to TripAdvisor, Twitter, a startup called the Long-Term Stock Exchange where we did start a stock exchange, and, most recently, writing software for primary care doctors and patients. My hobby for a long time has been politics. When I saw that no one had stepped up to challenge my former Congress member Seth Moulton, I stepped up to challenge him. Then he stepped aside to run for Senate. Now it\u2019s an open race, and I would be the first person to go directly from working as a software engineer into Congress.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>[01:31] JAMES:<\/strong><span> Just kicking off there, why do you think that\u2019s the case? It seems like Congress and a lot of our policy bodies don\u2019t have much tech background or experience.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>[01:41] BETH:<\/strong><span> Part of it\u2019s just money. It\u2019s a lot easier to get to Congress if you\u2019re a lawyer than from any other field. If you\u2019re rich, you\u2019re ten times more likely than the average person to go to Congress. If you\u2019re a lawyer, you\u2019re a hundred times more likely than the average person to go to Congress. Once a lawyer is running, they\u2019re twice as likely to win, and it\u2019s because lawyers donate to each other\u2019s political campaigns.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>We just don\u2019t have that history of political involvement in tech. I call up people I\u2019d worked with before, and almost none of them had ever donated to a political candidate. That\u2019s a very different place from which to enter the world of politics. What we see instead are people who have become executives, so they have their own money they can spend on it, people who went into marketing, or people who went off and got a law degree. Those are the ways people with technical experience most often move into politics. But it hasn\u2019t been something, at least in my career, that people really talked about or thought about: what would it take to get programmers involved in making decisions about technology?<\/p>\n<p><strong>[02:45] JAMES:<\/strong><span> Good to know why all the problems in our country are the way they are: too many Harvard- and Yale-educated lawyers. Even though tech folks aren\u2019t well represented in politics, technology has become a hot-button issue. What have you been hearing on the campaign trail? How do you think about that?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em>[03:07]<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>[03:07] BETH:<\/strong><span> I see a huge gap between the way average voters are thinking about technology and the way political people are thinking about technology. I think it\u2019s because the people in political spheres are mostly talking to executives, salespeople, lobbyists, and consultants whom tech companies have hired out of political circles because of those connections. It means they\u2019re getting a very skewed view of the world. As a result, we have billions of dollars in subsidies going to data centers and AI, and voters feel like their concerns don\u2019t even feature.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>No one is talking about how, when you call your doctor\u2019s office, you\u2019re now stuck talking to a robot, you can\u2019t figure out how to get through to a real person, and the robot can\u2019t help you. That\u2019s one of the very common experiences I\u2019ve encountered that people have had as their first\u2014or maybe even only\u2014experience with AI. Rolling out those products that only sort of work sometimes, in some places, has been really bad for our public image. It means that when a data center comes to town and people present it as an exciting opportunity to get involved in AI, what people hear is, \u201cwe\u2019re going to have a warehouse where we store the robots I hate talking to.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>[04:25] JAMES:<\/strong><span> Especially since you\u2019re running in the Democratic field, it would be easier to be knee-jerk anti-AI\u2014to say, \u201cWe hate this stuff. It\u2019s completely useless.\u201d From your perspective, why have you been interested in not being completely anti-data center or completely anti-AI? Why do you bring this particular viewpoint to the table?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em>[04:52]<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>[04:52] BETH:<\/strong><span> It may be naive, but I still think that we should be accurate and correct and be trying to get to the best possible outcome. I\u2019ve worked in data centers. My work has taken me into data centers. I\u2019ve never worked there on a day-to-day basis, but I know how few jobs they create because I\u2019ve been in them, and I have computers in them. I know that you don\u2019t want a bunch of people getting access to those machines.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>I also know there\u2019s a huge difference between the data centers we\u2019ve used for decades and a hundred acres with a bunch of natural gas generators hooked directly up to a natural gas pipeline. That\u2019s a scale of construction that certainly we had not been looking at. I think, if we were to take a step back and consider: does this just mean that these technologies are not ready for prime time? Are we trying to brute force things rather than get to efficiencies?<\/p>\n<p>When I started out, computers were a lot physically larger than they are now. We could do a lot less in the same amount of space. That\u2019s going to be true ten years from now, and it\u2019s going to be true twenty years from now. The trade-off to society of space and energy\u2014especially in a time when we\u2019re finally getting green energy that is cheaper than traditional forms\u2014and whether this is the right decision for all of us is a different question than whether it is the right decision for OpenAI or X.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s the role government should be playing: stepping back from just considering economics and looking at what we\u2019re trying to achieve and how much of this is doing that.<\/p>\n<p><strong>[06:34] JAMES:<\/strong><span> How do you balance those things? You still believe technology has a role and can help, but there are questions about data centers and their trade-offs. How do we balance them, especially as these facilities are built out?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>[06:51] BETH:<\/strong><span> One thing is that right now we are heavily subsidizing things. I am a socialist, but looking at the capitalist side, if you subsidize something, you\u2019re going to get more of it than we would naturally produce. You do that if you think there\u2019s some reason we\u2019re not producing enough of it. Sure. But if there are negative externalities\u2014if this is going to have negative impacts on the community around it\u2014it would make sense, if we want to get the right number of these, for that to be part of the cost you pay for a data center.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>I think a lot about how we get the incentives right. How do we set up a system where we don\u2019t have to decide at the top how many data centers we should have, but we also aren\u2019t putting our thumb on the scales and saying we are going to turn 20 percent of farmland into data centers because we want more data centers? We should have something where the costs are borne by the same people who are getting the benefits, and the value coming out is widely shared and not a monopoly. Those are the things I\u2019m most concerned about.<\/p>\n<p>Right now, an AI company sells a tool. Someone puts a wrapper around it and finds a really good use case, but is an LLM the right answer for whatever that application is? We\u2019re seeing this in law, where it is not really a great tool if what you\u2019re looking for is reliable citations. There are other approaches to machine learning and AI that could be better in those cases. We don\u2019t have those yet, but when the company making the tool doesn\u2019t bear the cost of those mistakes, it might be perfectly happy selling a tool that only works sixty percent of the time.<\/p>\n<div class=\"captioned-image-container\">\n<figure><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!taXY!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F63eee1be-0e72-40b8-9ad2-df9c84144930_2400x2050.png\" data-component-name=\"Image2ToDOM\" class=\"image-link image2 is-viewable-img can-restack\"><\/p>\n<div class=\"image2-inset\"><picture><source type=\"image\/webp\" srcset=\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!taXY!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F63eee1be-0e72-40b8-9ad2-df9c84144930_2400x2050.png 424w, https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!taXY!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F63eee1be-0e72-40b8-9ad2-df9c84144930_2400x2050.png 848w, https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!taXY!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F63eee1be-0e72-40b8-9ad2-df9c84144930_2400x2050.png 1272w, https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!taXY!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F63eee1be-0e72-40b8-9ad2-df9c84144930_2400x2050.png 1456w\" sizes=\"100vw\"\/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!taXY!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F63eee1be-0e72-40b8-9ad2-df9c84144930_2400x2050.png\" width=\"1456\" height=\"1244\" data-attrs=\"{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com\/public\/images\/63eee1be-0e72-40b8-9ad2-df9c84144930_2400x2050.png&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:1244,&quot;width&quot;:1456,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:null,&quot;bytes&quot;:253992,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image\/png&quot;,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:true,&quot;topImage&quot;:false,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/weightythoughts.com\/i\/211752246?img=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F63eee1be-0e72-40b8-9ad2-df9c84144930_2400x2050.png&quot;,&quot;isProcessing&quot;:false,&quot;align&quot;:null,&quot;offset&quot;:false}\" alt=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!taXY!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F63eee1be-0e72-40b8-9ad2-df9c84144930_2400x2050.png 424w, https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!taXY!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F63eee1be-0e72-40b8-9ad2-df9c84144930_2400x2050.png 848w, https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!taXY!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F63eee1be-0e72-40b8-9ad2-df9c84144930_2400x2050.png 1272w, https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!taXY!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F63eee1be-0e72-40b8-9ad2-df9c84144930_2400x2050.png 1456w\" sizes=\"auto, 100vw\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"sizing-normal\"\/><\/picture><\/div>\n<p><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p><strong>[08:38] JAMES:<\/strong><span> One question is the data center incentive model\u2014whether it\u2019s tax credits or other things, or whether the company itself bears the cost of the new interconnects and new power generation. The second is whether LLMs are the right tools for everything. I agree that they aren\u2019t, but they seem to have a place. I\u2019m curious whether some of that place belongs in government as well, because I think one of your particular planks is that government could use better software, use more technology, and come into the modern era a little bit.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>[09:19] BETH:<\/strong><span> Let\u2019s start with data centers. I want regulation that puts the companies building data centers well on equal footing with people cutting as many corners as they are legally allowed to. We know that we need to build out massive green energy infrastructure in this country just to move to energy independence and mitigate the impact of climate change. We have a lot of investors right now who would like a piece of AI companies and investment in AI. If we can tie those two things together, we can use that capital investment to fund the energy infrastructure we need anyway.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ve seen tech companies purposefully put their compute in some place like Finland that has built more efficient data centers because they care what the carbon impact of their computing is. If you put it in a country that has had incentives to build these things well, it also gives companies the option to do that. I would like to see us have that model: you\u2019re building out the energy; it supports good things with the water usage; and it is as efficient as possible, rather than going up as fast as possible.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The other thing about the incentives and subsidies right now is that we\u2019re building data centers wherever people think they can get away with building them. Very often, that\u2019s smaller towns they can threaten to sue, or states that offer communities less opportunity to push back. Those aren\u2019t necessarily the landscapes best suited to data centers. I\u2019d like to make sure we build them in places where we have the infrastructure and where it makes sense\u2014where that is the most efficient use for the land\u2014rather than just where democracy is weak.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>[11:17]<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>[11:17] JAMES:<\/strong><span> Is there a role for AI\u2014and, more specifically, LLMs\u2014in government? Could you also expand on your thoughts about government incorporating more software and technology?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>[11:32] BETH:<\/strong><span> One of the things we\u2019ve seen is that our government has built most of its technology in these giant contracts with contractors. You have to define all the requirements up front, get a bunch of bids, one person bids, they go build it, and if it doesn\u2019t work, you have to pay more. We know that waterfall development doesn\u2019t work at the best of times. When we are doing waterfall development and taking the lowest bids, it\u2019s proven even harder. It\u2019s especially hard to maintain software over time. You end up with twenty-five-year-old systems that have never been integrated as other systems have come online because that would be a new contract.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Prior to the current administration, we saw some alternative approaches, and that\u2019s what got turned into DOGE: the group that was going around and making sure that if someone in the government needed a website, they could get a website. It was far cheaper and far more responsive than trying to bid things out to contractors so shareholders could get some part of the profit. I\u2019d love to see more software development like that, where we decide what we want the software to do, and then the government is able to efficiently and effectively build that software.<\/p>\n<p>The places where I\u2019ve seen LLMs have really big payoffs are cases where you\u2019re looking for a counterexample. A lot of the math results that are coming out, and things that are that sort of search space, are trying to find something semantically similar. I think it\u2019s a very strong semantic tool. There\u2019s also a lot of software development that is semantic work. I\u2019d talked about that for a long time, trying to get people to focus on the semantics over just the syntax. I think we\u2019ve seen the power of that semantic tooling in the way LLMs have accelerated some forms of software development and made them accessible to a much larger group of people.<\/p>\n<p>One of the things I expect to see is a bunch of startups built by people who have no background in building software but, with an AI, were able to stand up a prototype and prove that it\u2019s useful. I haven\u2019t seen LLMs able to build maintainable code yet. Whatever the next level is that\u2019s going to get us to having it consider architecture, we have not invented it yet. But it\u2019s good enough to prove out ideas, to prove value, and to let us build software that just wouldn\u2019t have been built otherwise.<\/p>\n<p><strong>[14:00] JAMES:<\/strong><span> You also worked on a campaign, helping to build some of its infrastructure. What did you see technology do in that case?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em>[14:17]<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>[14:17] BETH:<\/strong><span> One of the interesting things is that technology teams aren\u2019t part of most campaigns, so it\u2019s not very common for tech to be part of campaigning. Most of the time, people rely on third-party or outside software products that they pay for, and they have to cope with whatever they\u2019re getting. It was a real luxury on a presidential campaign to be able to build a team. Ultimately, by the end, we got to seventy people. They did everything from supporting data analytics and machine-learning approaches to voter engagement\u2014identifying voters we might want to engage\u2014to writing the donation website, which was my job.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>We made that website run on IE7 and had a fallback in case everything was offline except for DNS. As long as DNS stayed up, we could serve you a donation website, get something back, and process it later.<\/p>\n<p>I haven\u2019t often in my career had the kind of high reward for very specific optimization, but we were able to raise more than $20 million extra for the campaign just by making that website behave really well.<\/p>\n<p>Campaign people aren\u2019t necessarily used to collaborating with software development people, but it\u2019s a place where agile methodologies really shine. Sometimes, if we can get this done by next Tuesday, it\u2019s worth doing; if we can\u2019t, it\u2019s not. Building incremental pieces and having something launched by Friday that you can improve until Tuesday guarantees you\u2019ll have something. It\u2019s worth putting the time into that, and we did a lot of it. The challenge is always: how do you pay for it? Campaigns are trying to save every dime they can find, everywhere they can find it, and software is expensive to build well.<\/p>\n<p><em>[16:15]<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>[16:15] JAMES:<\/strong><span> You and, I think, your father are both figures within extreme programming and agile programming\u2014the entire process, CI\/CD, and other things. Can you describe the philosophy you have put together and that particular framework?<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"captioned-image-container\">\n<figure><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!5VCW!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5e08b649-773a-4bad-b4c9-fac6d6bc3cf5_2400x2240.png\" data-component-name=\"Image2ToDOM\" class=\"image-link image2 is-viewable-img can-restack\"><\/p>\n<div class=\"image2-inset\"><picture><source type=\"image\/webp\" srcset=\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!5VCW!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5e08b649-773a-4bad-b4c9-fac6d6bc3cf5_2400x2240.png 424w, https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!5VCW!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5e08b649-773a-4bad-b4c9-fac6d6bc3cf5_2400x2240.png 848w, https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!5VCW!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5e08b649-773a-4bad-b4c9-fac6d6bc3cf5_2400x2240.png 1272w, https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!5VCW!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5e08b649-773a-4bad-b4c9-fac6d6bc3cf5_2400x2240.png 1456w\" sizes=\"100vw\"\/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!5VCW!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5e08b649-773a-4bad-b4c9-fac6d6bc3cf5_2400x2240.png\" width=\"1456\" height=\"1359\" data-attrs=\"{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com\/public\/images\/5e08b649-773a-4bad-b4c9-fac6d6bc3cf5_2400x2240.png&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:1359,&quot;width&quot;:1456,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:null,&quot;bytes&quot;:185564,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image\/png&quot;,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:true,&quot;topImage&quot;:false,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/weightythoughts.com\/i\/211752246?img=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5e08b649-773a-4bad-b4c9-fac6d6bc3cf5_2400x2240.png&quot;,&quot;isProcessing&quot;:false,&quot;align&quot;:null,&quot;offset&quot;:false}\" alt=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!5VCW!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5e08b649-773a-4bad-b4c9-fac6d6bc3cf5_2400x2240.png 424w, https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!5VCW!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5e08b649-773a-4bad-b4c9-fac6d6bc3cf5_2400x2240.png 848w, https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!5VCW!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5e08b649-773a-4bad-b4c9-fac6d6bc3cf5_2400x2240.png 1272w, https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!5VCW!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5e08b649-773a-4bad-b4c9-fac6d6bc3cf5_2400x2240.png 1456w\" sizes=\"auto, 100vw\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"sizing-normal\"\/><\/picture><\/div>\n<p><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p><strong>[16:33] BETH:<\/strong><span> This came out of my experience at very small and very large companies. My father\u2019s Kent Beck. He invented extreme programming, a style of working together for a group of programmers and a customer. It ignored the existence of executives and management chains: that\u2019s irrelevant; just let us build useful things. We\u2019ll be good. It turns out that ran into problems in corporate environments. It works very well in some companies. In others, teams might be delivering and still get shut down: this doesn\u2019t fit with how we run the company.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>When my company was bought up by Amazon, I realized the hard part for Amazon is not building software. They don\u2019t really mind if their software isn\u2019t super flexible. If it takes six months to change, all of that\u2019s fine. But they\u2019re trying to manage forty thousand engineers at a time, and to them, the much harder problem is how do we manage these engineers? How do we have visibility through the entire company? And so they didn\u2019t mind if they made programmers\u2019 lives harder, if it made managers\u2019 lives easier. And so that is what I describe as a forest or as a desert company. You can see all the way to the horizon, but resources are scarce. People feel like if some other team is doing well, it means that they\u2019re going to get less. You have a lot of time spent trying to estimate, and then a lot of pushback on whatever estimates the engineers come up with until they are willing to lie about how long something\u2019s going to take, and then a lot of pressure on them when they don\u2019t deliver it in the timeline that you made them commit to. All of those things would make no sense if your goal was just how much value can we deliver to customers. But they make a lot of sense if the hard thing is how do we decide what to have our engineers work on, and how do we decide who gets to have engineers at all?<\/p>\n<p>And then on the flip side, in companies that are willing to tolerate less visibility, that are willing to tolerate not knowing what every engineer is working on this week, you can let a team, you can give a team a problem and let them go do a sprint, and six weeks later come back. You know they\u2019re working with a customer, so you know they\u2019re getting real feedback on whether this is working. And you may not know who on that team is responsible for any given task. If some great feature comes out, the entire team shares credit. You kind of have to trust individual team leads or managers to know who on their team is performing well, who needs support, deal with the performance problems because you aren\u2019t going to see them up at the top. And you can\u2019t have one process that calibrates every engineer against every other engineer because you\u2019re not working in the same context as every other engineer. Someone who\u2019s working on a feature that has zero users, you don\u2019t have to care how reliable that feature is yet. Whereas someone who\u2019s working on a feature that is doing, I don\u2019t know, 100 million dollars a month, they really have to care that they aren\u2019t breaking things. And so those two teams might be operating in very different styles.<\/p>\n<p><span>And management trust: if you build a high trust environment, do all the things the book <\/span><em>Accelerate<\/em><span> talks about\u2014high accountability, rapid feedback cycles, the ability to ship constantly, the ability to fix problems quickly\u2014you can build really reliable software that works really well. But it takes a level of trust that you aren\u2019t going to have if the hard part of your company is managing forty thousand people.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>I think we definitely see this in government. Part of what the U.S. military did differently from other militaries was ideas like commander\u2019s intent: when you got orders, they said why someone had given them. Your job was not to do exactly as you were told, no matter what. It was to do what you were told as long as it served that purpose.<\/p>\n<p><strong>[20:24] JAMES:<\/strong><span> I\u2019m glad you also brought up the military example, especially since we can dive a little bit more into national security a bit. But I do think that forest and desert analogy is a great analogy in terms of where do we also see extreme effort put into documentation, stakeholder management, transparency to executives. The bigger thing being get buy-in to do a giant monolithic thing and not basically have it frozen in time forever. Sounds like a really good description of government, especially the legislative process. How do you think about that in terms of changing the culture of government or trying to move towards something that isn\u2019t so desert?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em>[21:04]<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>[21:04] BETH:<\/strong><span> It\u2019s a great question, and I haven\u2019t been there yet to experiment. But things that I\u2019ve seen work inside of those large desert companies is identifying why something is the way it is, and then finding a way to over deliver those parts. So, if someone is worried about you having visibility into what everyone\u2019s working on, oftentimes I would do the daily standups we\u2019re going to do anyway, and I\u2019ll take notes and I\u2019ll update all the tickets. And if you have one person who does all the busy work and provides cover for everyone else, they can work in effective ways. They can build the relationships so they all understand the software, focus on that, but we can still satisfy whatever the systems are that need to be satisfied.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>So that\u2019s one piece. I think the other one\u2014and this is something that software engineering does well in general\u2014is taking really big projects and slicing them up into smaller, achievable steps, each of which gets us closer to the ultimate goal. It\u2019s not something we see a lot in government. Very often, we\u2019ll pass one bill, and then it\u2019ll be twenty years before we do anything else on the topic.<\/p>\n<p>When it takes that long to pass a bill, if you aren\u2019t releasing often enough, you have to do really big releases. You\u2019re more likely to break things, and it\u2019s harder to get them out the door. All those things are true. I\u2019m curious if there are paths forward that are about making lawmaking more efficient, accessible, transparent, safe, feeling safer, and more collaborative.<\/p>\n<p><strong>I think it\u2019s a place where AI is particularly suited because it isn\u2019t a left-versus-right, Democrat-versus-Republican issue. Right now, it seems a lot more rural versus urban because rural areas tend to be where they\u2019re putting data centers, and people are mad about it.<\/strong><span> But I expect that eventually one side will probably decide to jump on the bandwagon, and the other side won\u2019t. Right now, I can talk to random Republicans on the street, and they will have exactly the same concerns the random Democrats do. I think this is a great place to look at that and also to apply modern technologies. We don\u2019t have our federal tax code in version control.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>I spent four hours tracing back a piece of Massachusetts law to which vote in the legislature caused this to happen. That\u2019s a question I could answer about any code I\u2019ve worked on in the last twenty years, or any document I\u2019ve worked on in the last ten years: where did this line come from? We just don\u2019t have those kinds of approaches to information in Congress because we haven\u2019t had the kind of technical collaboration and work on our own tools that would have gotten us there. If none of the people doing the thing can make the tools happen, you end up not having them. There\u2019s a reason that software development has better tooling on computers than most other professions. It\u2019s because we can build our own.<\/p>\n<p><strong>[24:03] JAMES:<\/strong><span> One reason I thought this would be an interesting interview is that you have experience in software and technology. You\u2019ve also talked with a lot of folks on the ground. Your specific campaign, I think, identifies with the DSA group, and you have experience working with DARPA. Those intersecting areas make it less likely that you\u2019ll boil the nuance down to a random talking point and slap it onto something. How do you talk to people about this? What you\u2019re describing sounds great, but within your framework, the forest requires trust\u2014and trust seems very lacking right now. How are you trying to bridge some of that gap?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em>[24:49]<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>[24:49] BETH:<\/strong><span> Yeah, some of it is just presenting myself as I am. The way I\u2019ve always thought about this campaign is: if I have to change myself into something else, I wasn\u2019t likely to succeed anyway. I\u2019ve grown up on the internet, and there\u2019s 30 years of me writing and doing stuff out there. Someone\u2019s gonna figure it out. So let me put myself out there.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>The way I introduce myself is: I\u2019m a software engineer, and I want to make sure AI works for all of us. Most people have no further questions. They will start telling me about their experiences with AI and why they\u2019re worried and what they\u2019re worried about, because they know that they\u2019re worried. They weren\u2019t sure anyone else was. They\u2019re especially worried that it doesn\u2019t feel like anyone in a position of power is looking out for them, understands what they\u2019re worried about, or even knows that these things are affecting their day-to-day lives.<\/p>\n<p>By echoing back to them that this is important and it matters, we\u2019re already building trust. Not everybody is going to trust me immediately. But I think that simply behaving in trustworthy ways gets you surprisingly far because so few people are doing it. That\u2019s not the usual strategy, because most people running for office are very good at fundraising, and that\u2019s the skill set they have.<\/p>\n<p>What I\u2019ve spent the last ten years doing is getting groups of people to trust each other enough to work together on software. When people challenge me, it\u2019s very often: what are you going to do about it? There\u2019s an immediate fear that there is no solution. The next thing I say is: I believe we need laws that protect people, the environment, and our future. Very often, that is all they were looking for. Have you thought about it? Can you present to me a plan that seems to make sense?<\/p>\n<p>If I started there by talking about my actual plans\u2014shifting the tax burden from work, from payroll taxes to automation taxes, so that we can continue funding Social Security and Medicare\u2014their eyes would glaze over. That\u2019s not the problem they\u2019re seeing. The problem they\u2019re seeing is they can\u2019t call their doctor. If I\u2019m not talking about the problem they\u2019re seeing, they don\u2019t have any way to evaluate whether the idea I\u2019m putting forward is a good idea. That\u2019s not the level of abstraction we\u2019re going to have a conversation at.<\/p>\n<p>I think that\u2019s a place where technical people can very easily get lost: we\u2019re excited about the details. We want to share all of these cool things we know. For someone who doesn\u2019t have the one step back from that, it feels overwhelming. It feels like they have to do a whole bunch of extra homework before they\u2019re ever going to be able to work with us and support our political goals. That doesn\u2019t feel good. It makes them feel like we don\u2019t know anything about their lives.<\/p>\n<p>Being able to have a conversation that acknowledges the problems they\u2019re having and tells them they\u2019re not wrong, right? You are correct. And I have a solution. Well, thank goodness, right? Do I care about the details of the solution? No. Please hit the button that says this will work better. We\u2019ll get into all of those details when we\u2019re actually making law. That\u2019s the right time, because I\u2019m not going to be able to just pass whatever I want. It\u2019s going to be about building a coalition of people who want to see these improvements happen.<\/p>\n<p>Very often in software, there are five or six reasonable ways to do something. Which one we choose depends on some things, but sometimes we just flip a coin, right? Or one person was really excited about this, and the other one said, \u201cWell, as long as it can handle X, Y, Z cases, I guess that\u2019s fine.\u201d We tried it out, and it could handle those cases, so we\u2019re good. We\u2019ll go for it.<\/p>\n<p>And that would be my approach to legislation is: there\u2019s not the one specific law I already know that I\u2019m going to absolutely pass word for word. It is: I know what I want legislation to accomplish. I know what we need these laws to do, and I have at least one proof of concept for each of them, so that I know it\u2019s possible.<\/p>\n<p><em>[28:54]<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>[28:54] JAMES:<\/strong><span> That\u2019s a good segue for jumping into the details, which I think this audience would appreciate. One of the more specific proposals is a robot tax, and I\u2019d love to know how to think about that, because it almost begs the question. I\u2019ve heard both things from a lot of Democratic candidates and, I think, in some of your Blue Sky posts and whatnot: AI is a big bubble, and it\u2019s hard to say if it will do anything; at the same time, it\u2019s going to take everyone\u2019s jobs.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>On the robot side, what makes this different from, say, CI\/CD pipelines? To some degree, you\u2019re taking away some QA engineers\u2019 and infrastructure engineers\u2019 jobs, maybe, or at least changing the nature of the jobs. Should we have taxed that too? Getting down to brass tacks, what is this thing? What makes it different? Is it not different? How should we treat it?<\/p>\n<p><strong>[29:51] BETH:<\/strong><span> So I call it a robot tax because that\u2019s an idea that\u2019s been out there since the \u201990s that Bill Gates originally proposed. I\u2019m not really interested in the definition of a robot or if it\u2019s replacing a human. AIs might be great at jobs that no human has ever done.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Same time, I do think that there are ways for AI to take jobs, even if it isn\u2019t productive, which is when companies are spending their money building data centers and not on other forms of innovation. I think a lot of the layoffs we\u2019re seeing aren\u2019t because people have been replaced by AI. It\u2019s because whole business lines have been replaced with spending on AI instead.<\/p>\n<p>The thing that I would like to see is that right now, if you hire a person, you end up paying on average 21 percent in taxes on whatever salary you pay them. If you buy a piece of automation, you are paying about 5 percent tax on that over what you just paid for it, and that\u2019s it. It used to be higher, but through a bunch of obscure tax rules, we\u2019ve cut that down and down and down. Now it\u2019s much cheaper to hire a machine than an equally productive person that costs the same amount. That seems backwards. We shouldn\u2019t be discouraging people from employing humans. There\u2019s always going to be some downside to humans\u2014we get the flu.<\/p>\n<p>When I propose a robot tax, rather than trying to describe exactly what a robot is, what I want to see is that we are taxing automation just as much as we are taxing people. We are taxing production instead of how production happens.<\/p>\n<p><strong>[31:24] JAMES:<\/strong><span> But maybe describe a little bit more by what you mean about taxing automation less than people.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>[31:30] BETH:<\/strong><span> There are several different mechanisms we could use. One is that because we\u2019ve moved all bonus depreciation to year one, people are writing off 100 percent of the cost of machinery in the first year. We could just take payroll taxes off the top of that, so you get to write off 79 percent of the cost, not 100 percent.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>But that\u2019s just one possible implementation of many, and there is the question of which things are productive\u2014like depreciable assets. There\u2019s some very good research out of MIT; that\u2019s where the numbers about how much we\u2019re currently charging people come from. They are more skeptical than I am of taxing automation. I think we\u2019ve seen with payroll taxes that people still get hired. I don\u2019t think the demand for automation is that elastic, except where people are a close substitute\u2014where you\u2019re choosing between a person and a computer. But I think, in general, it\u2019s going to be pretty inelastic. The same way investment is pretty inelastic, and those.<\/p>\n<p>So I look forward to hearing what ideas are most palatable to other members of Congress. But I think it\u2019s important that we\u2019re not rewarding companies that fire people. Just to have society continue.<\/p>\n<p><em>[32:55]<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>[32:55] JAMES:<\/strong><span> Sure, I have my personal skepticism that they\u2019re actually firing people to reallocate just to AI. I have a suspicion that many of these companies are laying people off because they overhired, and it\u2019s great to attribute it to AI because you didn\u2019t make a mistake. You\u2019re taking advantage of a new shining opportunity that Wall Street should expect will produce much more profit later because it\u2019s AI or something.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>A lot of these things are difficult to implement, though. It\u2019s easy, especially from a desert perspective, to mess something up in ways that are hard to preconceive because you can\u2019t see around every corner. With the political dysfunction these days, it seems even harder\u2014more deserty. We\u2019ve seen instances of this before the current dysfunction: Prop 13 in California and state government; FOSTA-SESTA in 2018, which was supposed to do good things for vulnerable populations and instead does the exact opposite. And then we look at\u2014<\/p>\n<p><strong>[34:03] BETH:<\/strong><span> To be fair, we knew that was going to do the exact opposite when it passed. True, that\u2019s true. I hate being right\u2014it really sucks being right.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>[34:10] JAMES:<\/strong><span> Now we\u2019ve definitely seen that it did not do the right things. For Europe, lots of their regulations have the best intentions, yet somehow they find ways of doing the exact opposite in ways that I can\u2019t even imagine how you would do that deliberately. It\u2019s just hard to do regulation, and especially with the political dysfunction that we have. How would you think about government being able to step in that way? It\u2019s hard for me to trust that government is going to get it right. And if government gets it wrong, I might argue that could be worse than just not having government step in at all.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>[34:44] BETH:<\/strong><span> It\u2019s part of why this is a place where I do lean on market mechanisms. I don\u2019t want the government trying to tell me which model is okay for me to use because that\u2019s not something the government is good at. But we have this thing, these consumer protection laws, and I can trust that my microwave\u2019s not going to explode because we have consumer protection laws. When X-rays first came out, they were using them to X-ray kids\u2019 feet to see how the shoes fit, right? We don\u2019t do that anymore because we have consumer protection laws.<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"captioned-image-container\">\n<figure><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!c9Gi!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F15092d3d-26bb-45a1-b6dd-be47e4ba11c0_2400x1870.png\" data-component-name=\"Image2ToDOM\" class=\"image-link image2 is-viewable-img can-restack\"><\/p>\n<div class=\"image2-inset\"><picture><source type=\"image\/webp\" srcset=\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!c9Gi!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F15092d3d-26bb-45a1-b6dd-be47e4ba11c0_2400x1870.png 424w, https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!c9Gi!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F15092d3d-26bb-45a1-b6dd-be47e4ba11c0_2400x1870.png 848w, https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!c9Gi!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F15092d3d-26bb-45a1-b6dd-be47e4ba11c0_2400x1870.png 1272w, https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!c9Gi!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F15092d3d-26bb-45a1-b6dd-be47e4ba11c0_2400x1870.png 1456w\" sizes=\"100vw\"\/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!c9Gi!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F15092d3d-26bb-45a1-b6dd-be47e4ba11c0_2400x1870.png\" width=\"1456\" height=\"1134\" data-attrs=\"{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com\/public\/images\/15092d3d-26bb-45a1-b6dd-be47e4ba11c0_2400x1870.png&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:1134,&quot;width&quot;:1456,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:null,&quot;bytes&quot;:163576,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image\/png&quot;,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:true,&quot;topImage&quot;:false,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/weightythoughts.com\/i\/211752246?img=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F15092d3d-26bb-45a1-b6dd-be47e4ba11c0_2400x1870.png&quot;,&quot;isProcessing&quot;:false,&quot;align&quot;:null,&quot;offset&quot;:false}\" alt=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!c9Gi!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F15092d3d-26bb-45a1-b6dd-be47e4ba11c0_2400x1870.png 424w, https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!c9Gi!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F15092d3d-26bb-45a1-b6dd-be47e4ba11c0_2400x1870.png 848w, https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!c9Gi!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F15092d3d-26bb-45a1-b6dd-be47e4ba11c0_2400x1870.png 1272w, https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!c9Gi!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F15092d3d-26bb-45a1-b6dd-be47e4ba11c0_2400x1870.png 1456w\" sizes=\"auto, 100vw\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"sizing-normal\"\/><\/picture><\/div>\n<p><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>I would like to see those laws applied to software, and we\u2019ve gotten away with not having them apply to us for 50-plus years. But I think these AI products have enough foreseeable harm. It\u2019s not, \u201cNo, we had no idea this could do that.\u201d We know the kinds of errors that tend to come out of models like this. We know that we can\u2019t block every possible path someone could use to get them to hack something because we\u2014it\u2019s natural language, right? There are severe limitations to some of those things, so we should treat them as the dangerous tools they are. But we have a lot of dangerous tools. I\u2019m way more afraid of a chainsaw than I am of an LLM. But we also have laws about how chainsaws have to\u2014like, you can\u2019t sell them to children, right?<\/p>\n<p>I think, in times when uncertainty is high\u2014and this is certainly one of those times\u2014falling back on things that try to grab control is very unlikely to succeed.<\/p>\n<p>I describe it as I\u2019m an open source is good nerd, not a the government should run the internet nerd. I like distributed systems where people can make decisions that are good for them, but that requires them having information and not being lied to. Plenty of people in our industry don\u2019t understand attention transformations. These aren\u2019t things that we are going to teach to everybody. If they have to understand all these models to use them well, we\u2019re not going to be able to use them well. Those are very predictable outcomes.<\/p>\n<p>At the same time, we can see the places where it\u2019s broken stuff that already existed. For example, traffic to anything is now more than fifty percent bots. Some of that\u2019s because there are more bots, but some is because there\u2019s a lot less traffic. The result is that a bunch of these websites that produced useful information are going to go under. We are not going to have new information coming onto the internet as frequently as we used to, because you can\u2019t make money off it anymore. The same thing is true of journalism. I expect to see similar things with open source software. We\u2019re seeing a lot of open source projects having to ban AI-generated contributions because the quality bar for something that is in the infrastructure of every Fortune 500 company is just not the same as the quality bar for your personal website.<\/p>\n<p>And so I think we could use the proceeds from taxing automation to support the things that automation has been undercutting, and make sure that we can bridge to a world where the things that contribute value get rewarded. For example, a public Corporation for Public Journalism that could support nonprofit newspapers across America, I think, would be a very productive thing to have. It would support towns like mine that lost our newspapers to private equity, and it means that if people are relying on LLMs for journalism content or to ask what happened yesterday, that there\u2019s a place for the LLMs to look and find out.<\/p>\n<p><em>[38:30]<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>[38:30] JAMES:<\/strong><span> Let\u2019s assume we want to regulate these things, tax them, and support them. We aren\u2019t in the same environment that we were in the 1950s, 60s, 70s, or 80s. The U.S. is no longer the sole player at the vanguard of technology. We have a global environment where there are national security questions and places our laws don\u2019t reach. All these regulations run into a world where the U.S. can\u2019t just make rules for everyone. How do we balance these things with that environment? How do we balance the national security concerns when there are other countries that could run forward with AI, everyone could use Chinese models, and we could no longer regulate them?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>[39:20] BETH:<\/strong><span> Well, if our plan was to have it be three American companies and nobody else can do this, we were always doomed. There are so few times that has worked, and the times it has worked involve us killing like tens of thousands of people in order to make it work. I think that computer programmers\u2014Linux, for example\u2014were rebelling against this very thing, when operating systems were monopolies that were controlled and had national security implications, mostly for other countries rather than the United States. But there are serious national security implications of using U.S. software for other countries. A lot of Americans have contributed to Linux. I think it would be a mistake to take America out of the open innovation world and have us live in a world where just a few companies dominate things and have the power to raise prices.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>One of the things I\u2019m scared about down the line, from personal experience, is that they roll out AI and get small businesses to all fire their part-time accountants. All the CPAs go out of business and have to go get other jobs, and then the AI companies hike the price. I once had to switch from one maps provider to another in a month because the provider we\u2019d been using came back and told us they were going to charge us a hundred times what they\u2019d been charging on the contract renewal.<\/p>\n<p>Luckily, if you have a nice little wrapper around your map class, that\u2019s not too hard. But if you didn\u2019t have that, you were going to be stuck paying a hundred times what you\u2019d been paying for the next year. I don\u2019t want that monopoly power to hit every company in America. I think that could be really bad for our economy, and we end up with a huge amount of our profits going to a couple of AI companies and their investors.<\/p>\n<p><em>[41:19]<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>[41:19] JAMES:<\/strong><span> That\u2019s the interesting part about having lived experience in technology: usually, the industry breaks these things up when another technology is adopted and weakens the previous one. Bernie had a plan to potentially take some sort of golden shares in AI companies. My reaction\u2014whether to golden shares or certain safety controls that Anthropic and OpenAI propose\u2014is: please, no. I don\u2019t want to enshrine these companies as the forever monopoly provider blessed by the U.S. government. What\u2019s your perspective on enshrining these companies?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>[42:03] BETH:<\/strong><span> I think it\u2019s a terrible idea. I think we\u2019ve seen that that\u2019s a terrible idea. We\u2019ve tried that. Amtrak is nobody\u2019s favorite train company in the world, right? And that\u2019s a more natural monopoly than this is. This is not a natural monopoly, and the natural cost of software is zero. Right now, it costs more than that to run these models. They\u2019re still very heavyweight. But I think as we get more specific models, that\u2019s also going to change.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>I want to see a world where we can cope with the downsides. We can hold people responsible for what models they use, so that there\u2019s always a human being responsible. I think that\u2019s the piece that\u2019s missing right now: who is responsible for deploying this model? It shouldn\u2019t matter that the model exists, right? It should matter how we\u2019re using it. If you\u2019re building a model, are you honest about what it can and can\u2019t do? Are you selling it for things that are appropriate uses for it? Did you design it to be addictive? We\u2019ve seen with Facebook that you don\u2019t have to do it on purpose. If you just fire everybody who doesn\u2019t get their metrics to go up, evolutionarily you get a very addictive product.<\/p>\n<p>And seeing those same incentives play out in AI worries me a lot more than even the national security implications because if we want to, we can do the same thing China is doing. We could have open-weight models of our own here that rely on distillation. That\u2019s a thing we could choose to do. We could choose to have the government, if we decide it is a natural monopoly, to build that initial model, and everyone else is just going to distill off of that. That initial model would be the thing I would think would be an appropriate place for the government to do it. Why are we doing three of those when we could do one and have everyone distill from it?<\/p>\n<p><strong>[43:41] JAMES:<\/strong><span> And it relies on all of the collective.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>[43:45] BETH:<\/strong><span> Writings of humanity that they\u2019ve scraped off the web, so it would make sense that that would be something like the Library of Congress would do. They would provide a model based on all of the knowledge we\u2019ve ever done in a way that has the value of that going back to people who are writing things today, so that we can have more of that in the future.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>That kind of thing, you could imagine a stable system like that, but that\u2019s not what we\u2019re going to get to if it\u2019s about making back money for investors. If that\u2019s the goal, we\u2019re going to get a very different system, one that is going to be constantly undercut from overseas in countries where that\u2019s not the goal, where the goal is value. And that\u2019s the downside of deserts: they can get beaten out by a much smaller, cheaper startup that is only delivering that their only concern is how good the software is.<\/p>\n<p><em>[44:36]<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>[44:36] JAMES:<\/strong><span> Thinking about how AI can work for all of us and the right place for it, I\u2019ll give you a moment to pontificate. Expanding on what you think about that\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>[44:47] BETH:<\/strong><span> I think about the things that are too expensive right now to do. The places we are seeing LLMs in particular be particularly valuable are places where being wrong is fine. There\u2019s not a big downside if you\u2019re wrong, and the upside to being right is enormous, which makes sense for things like NP-complete problems. That\u2019s what you\u2019re looking for: those kinds of parallelization things where, if you could just hire six thousand people, you could have easily solved this. But it was never going to be worth hiring six thousand people. Those are the places where this is going to pay off a lot.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>The more we can democratize access to that without building tools designed to, I don\u2019t know, manipulate people into spending as much money as possible, the better. All the things that are bad when humans do them, we can also now do much more efficiently: fraud at scale, cults at scale, cheating at scale. Those aren\u2019t things that we wanted more of. It kind of sucks that those are the first places this is taking off, because it was really expensive to hire someone to write all your papers for you. Only the really rich kids got to do that, and now everyone has access to it. Actually, nobody should have had access to that.<\/p>\n<p>It turns out we\u2019re going to find which things are good and we want more of those, and which things are bad and we want less. And how do we build a system where you don\u2019t do that anymore? And that means we go back to writing all of our papers by hand on paper in a room with someone watching\u2014that\u2019s how it\u2019s going to be. We don\u2019t have elementary school kids smuggling calculators into their first-grade math classes, and I think we can get to that same place with AI.<\/p>\n<p>But it\u2019s definitely going to be a journey. It\u2019s going to be a hard social transformation as things that used to be expensive are now cheap. And what I\u2019m worried about is who does that give power to? And how are they going to abuse that power? So, I think the thing I am most worried about is private armies able to commit war crimes at scale with just one person deciding that they want to have that happen.<\/p>\n<p><em>[47:00]<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>[47:00] JAMES:<\/strong><span> The underlying issue for a lot of this is the liability model, right? We haven\u2019t figured out the right model for social media companies. Even for something that should have been easier, like self-driving cars and whatnot, we haven\u2019t figured it out. How do we establish a liability model for AI when we haven\u2019t been able to deal with these things for decades?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>[47:27] BETH:<\/strong><span> I think this is where the public movement comes in\u2014the fact that you\u2019ll have 2,000 people show up at a meeting against data centers. No one has ever, that I know of, had two thousand people show up at a meeting about self-driving cars anywhere, much less like every town in America, you can get that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>For better or worse\u2014however broken our democracy is\u2014we still have elections. Voters can still run things. All I had to do was a chunk of paperwork, then collect thousands of signatures, and I\u2019m on the ballot. I\u2019m a little ahead of my time, probably because there\u2019s not a lot of media coverage of these things yet. It\u2019s just starting to pick up, with people booing it at convention or convocation speeches and all of that, and people are noticing that there\u2019s this popular sentiment.<\/p>\n<p>But the popular sentiment is real, and if we can give it a direction that can actually fix the problem, we can get things done that otherwise would have been impossible. We\u2019ve seen this over and over in America, where big changes have always happened because of public pressure. It\u2019s not because politicians suddenly decided they were going to do the right thing and grew a conscience\u2014their hearts grew six sizes that day, or whatever. It\u2019s that people across the country realized railway monopolies were bankrupting their farms. You got socialists, farmers, and business people all organizing against railway monopolies, and then you got railway regulation.<\/p>\n<p>And we haven\u2019t seen that same kind of public pressure, even against social media, and especially not before AI came along, because people were getting real value from social media. That was where you saw your friends. And the fact that now your feed is full of AI, I think, is part of why people are starting to try to do more about social media, because AI has kind of broken the social contract that we\u2019d negotiated. We\u2019re like, yeah, we know you\u2019re stealing all our data and selling it to absolutely anyone who asks. But I get to see my grandkids, so sure. If I don\u2019t get to see my grandkids, why would I still do the rest of that?<\/p>\n<p><em>[49:37]<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>[49:37] JAMES:<\/strong><span> What impact do you hope your campaign will have?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>[49:42] BETH:<\/strong><span> There are two sides to that. One is in the 6th District. The last time we had an open seat like this was 30 years ago. This is the first time in 30 years we\u2019ve had a chance to choose what kind of Democrat will represent us. We don\u2019t have strong organizing across the district. I\u2019m not endorsed by DSA because we\u2019ve never endorsed a DSA candidate in this area, and we\u2019re going to start with a federal office. Even though I\u2019m a member, I encourage people involved in my campaign to join, and we\u2019ll keep building that over time, we didn\u2019t have that when we were starting out.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>And then on the AI side, every conversation I have with someone where I tell them that I want to run for office because we can make AI work for all of us, and they believe me, is one more person who thinks that this is possible, who thinks it\u2019s worth fighting for. And if I can get some of these specific ideas into the national conversations. There are people who absolutely do not want these things to happen. It\u2019s going to cost people money. There\u2019s a lot of people who don\u2019t want the liability because they\u2019ve gotten to see the last fifty years where we just got to play. We tried all sorts of things, and they don\u2019t want to give that up. Even though we\u2019ve now created something so powerful and useful and dangerous that we probably shouldn\u2019t get to just do whatever we want with it anymore. But anything you can choose\u2014even using less electricity\u2014there are companies out there that would like us to use more electricity. They would like us to use as much electricity as we could possibly use because that\u2019ll drive the price up, so they can make more money. Right? Like that\u2019s how capitalism works. There\u2019s always someone on the other side of the transaction, and so getting these ideas out there and getting the predictions out there, so that when these things start happening, people can look back and be like, \u201cYeah, that\u2019s that thing Beth said was going to happen.\u201d And here\u2019s the solution we already know\u2014a thing we can do something about. And so I\u2019d love to avoid the 30 years of slow collapse and the Great Depression. I\u2019d love if we could skip that this time. But if we can\u2019t, we can speed up recovery, right? And I think we saw the difference between 2008 and the COVID recession, and the 2001 dot-com bubble burst, and what we do in response to changes really matters to ordinary people who are trying to put food on the table.<\/p>\n<p><em>[51:59]<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>[51:59] JAMES:<\/strong><span> What do you do to stay more human and ground yourself?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>[52:03] BETH:<\/strong><span> When I\u2019m not running for Congress, I sing in a choir, and I love singing in choirs even more than doing music myself because it\u2019s such a visceral experience of building something bigger than ourselves. No one person in the choir could do all of that themselves. It is something that\u2019s only possible because humans come together and make mouth noises. I think that\u2019s an absolutely delightful celebration of what makes us human.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>[52:30] JAMES:<\/strong><span> Awesome! Thanks so much, Beth. Thanks for joining me.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>[52:33] BETH:<\/strong><span> Thank you so much for having me.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>I hope you enjoyed this interview. If you\u2019d like to learn more about AI\u2019s past, present, and future in an easy-to-understand way, I\u2019ve published a book titled <\/span><em>What You Need to Know About AI<\/em><span>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>You can order the book on <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/4qCERMX\">Amazon<\/a><span>, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/bit.ly\/barnesandnobleaibook\">Barnes &amp; Noble<\/a><span>, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/bit.ly\/bookshopaibook\">Bookshop<\/a><span>, or pick up a copy in-person at a <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.smartaibook.com\/buy\">local bookstore<\/a><span>.<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"captioned-image-container\">\n<figure><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/bit.ly\/smartaibook\" data-component-name=\"Image2ToDOM\" class=\"image-link image2 is-viewable-img can-restack\"><\/p>\n<div class=\"image2-inset\"><picture><source type=\"image\/webp\" srcset=\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!27oJ!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1fe41c8a-2cd8-4e0b-87b3-568b13d7dbcc_1200x959.webp 424w, https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!27oJ!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1fe41c8a-2cd8-4e0b-87b3-568b13d7dbcc_1200x959.webp 848w, https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!27oJ!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1fe41c8a-2cd8-4e0b-87b3-568b13d7dbcc_1200x959.webp 1272w, https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!27oJ!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1fe41c8a-2cd8-4e0b-87b3-568b13d7dbcc_1200x959.webp 1456w\" sizes=\"100vw\"\/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!27oJ!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1fe41c8a-2cd8-4e0b-87b3-568b13d7dbcc_1200x959.webp\" width=\"1200\" height=\"959\" data-attrs=\"{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com\/public\/images\/1fe41c8a-2cd8-4e0b-87b3-568b13d7dbcc_1200x959.webp&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:959,&quot;width&quot;:1200,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:null,&quot;bytes&quot;:181090,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image\/webp&quot;,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/bit.ly\/smartaibook&quot;,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:true,&quot;topImage&quot;:false,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/weightythoughts.com\/i\/undefined?img=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1fe41c8a-2cd8-4e0b-87b3-568b13d7dbcc_1200x959.webp&quot;,&quot;isProcessing&quot;:false,&quot;align&quot;:null,&quot;offset&quot;:false}\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!27oJ!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1fe41c8a-2cd8-4e0b-87b3-568b13d7dbcc_1200x959.webp 424w, https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!27oJ!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1fe41c8a-2cd8-4e0b-87b3-568b13d7dbcc_1200x959.webp 848w, https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!27oJ!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1fe41c8a-2cd8-4e0b-87b3-568b13d7dbcc_1200x959.webp 1272w, https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!27oJ!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1fe41c8a-2cd8-4e0b-87b3-568b13d7dbcc_1200x959.webp 1456w\" sizes=\"auto, 100vw\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"sizing-normal\"\/><\/picture><\/div>\n<p><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/weightythoughts.com\/p\/whats-the-right-balance-in-regulating?utm_source=tldrai\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I don\u2019t normally do politics content, but Bethany Andres-Beck\u2019s team reached out to me. After a brief screening conversation, I thought it would be an interesting opportunity to talk about AI, regulation, and politics. Bethany has worked as a software engineer at BAE Systems, TripAdvisor, Twitter, and more. They also served as the tech lead [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":23402,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[143],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scannn.com\/lv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scannn.com\/lv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scannn.com\/lv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scannn.com\/lv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scannn.com\/lv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/scannn.com\/lv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23401\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scannn.com\/lv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scannn.com\/lv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scannn.com\/lv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scannn.com\/lv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}