REP WARREN DAVIDSON: Privacy, Artificial Intelligence, And Congress

As Artificial Intelligence (AI) continues to grow in both popularity and overall ability, Congress needs to act proactively — not reactively — to protect the American people by passing comprehensive frameworks to address concerns with AI. Recently named one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential Voices on AI, Pope Leo XIV recently expressed similar concerns and spoke of the need to “use these gifts wisely, ensuring they serve the common good.” What’s more, a new poll from Pew Research shows that over 53% of Americans say AI is doing more to hurt than help people keep their personal information private.

Unfortunately, Congress hasn’t taken AI regulatory issues seriously — including the privacy implications.  Many of the worst risks with AI don’t come from the technology alone but from the absence of strong privacy safeguards. Without clear limits on how data is collected, stored, and shared, AI becomes a powerful tool for exploitation and surveillance. That’s why any serious conversation about Artificial Intelligence begins with privacy.

Privacy forms the base layer for ethical Artificial Intelligence. How do you safeguard your own data? Who is liable if your data is compromised, especially by AI? Does simply entering a query into a search engine or engaging in dialogue with AI void a reasonable expectation of privacy? Can the company then claim that data as its own? Can that search or query be made public? Sold and monetized?  When, if ever, should law enforcement require a warrant or subpoena?

These are important questions that Congress must answer, and if Congress is unable to answer them, then state governments may have to take the lead for now. In the meantime, surveillance capitalism and government spying on its own citizens has run amok. At the intersection, Palantir has been commissioned to develop an AI tool to unify the data in every federal database, turning it into useful, easily accessible information.