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(NEW YORK) — A year after “soft swinging” allegations embroiled a group of Mormon TikTok influencers in Utah, one of them is opening up about the aftermath of being unwittingly swept into the ensuing scandal, and the effect it had on her mental health.

“I experienced my first real panic attack, which I had never had before, just like rocking back and forth hyperventilating,” Miranda McWhorter said in a recent “Impact x Nightline” interview on Hulu. McWhorter denied participating in the alleged swinging.

The episode explores the industry known as “mom-fluencing” — where mothers amassing huge social media followings by sharing an often curated version of their families’ lives, posting everything from their kids’ hair routines to back to school hacks, while monetizing their content with lucrative brand deals.

Influencing is a multi-billion dollar industry, and moms are said to make up about 30% of that total, according to data from the Center on Digital Culture and Society at Penn’s Annenberg School for Communication.

“When you have a mom influencer who has over a million followers, who is incredibly dedicated to her content creation, that’s when you can really start seeing the big money and the million dollar a year contracts. They’re essentially running media empires,” Piazza told “Impact.”

But there’s more than meets the eye with some of these seemingly perfect lives. The big business of influencing also goes hand in hand with the scandals and controversies going on behind the screen — something McWhorter knows firsthand.

When fellow mom-fluencer Taylor Frankie Paul announced she was getting divorced last May, Paul claimed she and her husband had a non-monogamous lifestyle and seemed to implicate other Mormon “MomTok” influencers in her group.

“I don’t know what you would call it, if it’s like soft swinging, but you don’t fully switch if that makes sense and go all the way, and to be honest, I did. We had an agreement, like all of us, and I did step out of that agreement, and that’s where I messed up,” Paul said during a livestream. She added, “No one was innocent, everyone has hooked up with like everyone in this situation.”

All members of the group targeted by the speculation quickly denied their involvement, including McWhorter, who posted that she had “nothing to do with [Paul’s] divorce” and “never soft swapped” with anybody.

McWhorter now tells “Impact” she has since moved away from Utah back to her hometown in Idaho.

“I’ve seen so many people say, ‘Miranda just moved out of Utah to get away from everything and everyone in Utah.’ And though that wasn’t the sole reason, I’m like, ‘I have no shame admitting that I was, like, ‘See ya. This is toxic for me and my mental health,'” McWhorter said.

Paul did not respond to a request for comment.

“Impact” also explored the controversy surrounding 31-year-old mom-fluencer Kathleen Sorenson, who was found guilty after falsely accusing a Latino couple of attempting to kidnap her children in 2020.

Meanwhile, a growing movement of mothers on social media seem to be ditching the idea of posting pristine images of their “flawless” family. Breaking out of that picture-perfect mold are mom influencers like Rosie Nguyen, who’s creating content about the “invisible labor” some moms take on, cracking jokes and writing skits about the messy side of motherhood.

“What blew my mind was that brands started reaching out. And they were like, ‘We want you to be just you.’ And I was like, ‘Stop. And you’re gonna pay me?'” Nguyen told “Impact.”

But when Nguyen first entered the mom-fluencing world, she says she didn’t see many moms who looked like her.

“Being an Asian creator, and an Asian mom content creator, I definitely see that we’re not represented well. There are brands who, you can scroll through their feed and it’s like, not a single diverse person is on there,” Nguyen said.

ABC News’ correspondent Janai Norman spoke to attendees at a conference called “Mom 2.0,” including Jill Smokler, who founded the popular site “Scary Mommy” in 2008.

Smokler, a mom of three, said she created the blog with the goal of documenting “the real side of parenthood.” She sold the blog to a major media company in 2015. Now that her children are older, she’s working to create a new brand called “She’s Got Issues.”

“It’s sort of where Scary Mommy left off, with where we are, where I am now, with older kids, with aging parents, with physical changes,” Smokler said.

But the rules have changed and Smokler is just trying to get back in the game.

“I felt like it shifted from natural, organic content into more calculated content. And my life is not that way. So I couldn’t even — even if I tried — could not portray that type of image. And I wouldn’t want to,” Smokler said.

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(NEW YORK) — General Motors is recalling over 660,000 SUVs due to a potential safety issue involving car seats.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration posted a recall notice on its website Thursday, stating that in certain models of Chevrolet Equinox and GMC Terrain vehicles, the rear-seat LATCH anchorage bars used to secure car seats may have “excessive powder coating” that would prevent them from being installed.

LATCH (lower anchors and tethers for children) is an attachment system that can be used instead of the seat belt to install a car seat.

LATCH anchorage bars can be found in nearly all car seats and passenger vehicles made on or after Sept. 1, 2002, according to the Department of Transportation.

The Equinox and Terrain vehicles impacted by the recall are from 2020 to 2023, according to GM and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The NHTSA is advising owners of impacted vehicles to temporarily use the car’s rear seat belts to install car seats until the anchorage bars are fixed.

“Dealers will inspect the latch anchorage bars, and remove and replace the finish, as necessary, free of charge,” NHTSA said in the recall notice.

The American Academy of Pediatrics says in its car seat safety guide that the use of either a vehicle’s seat belt or its LATCH are “equally safe” options.

The AAP’s guidelines say that just one of the two options should be used at a time, “unless the car safety seat and vehicle manufacturers say it is OK to use both systems at the same time.”

GM notes there have been no accidents, injuries or fatalities related to the LATCH issue in the affected Chevrolet Equinox and GMC Terrain vehicles.

“GM is voluntarily recalling certain 2020 – 2023 Chevrolet Equinox and GMC Terrain vehicles. In these vehicles, the four-seat lower child seat LATCH anchorage bars may have excessive powder coating, which could prevent a child seat from being installed with the anchorage bars,” the company said in a statement to ABC News. “As such, these vehicles fail to comply with the requirements of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard number 225, ‘Child Restraint Anchorage Systems.'”

GM said it plans to send letters to impacted owners next month.

Owners may also contact Chevrolet customer service at 1-800-222-1020 or GMC customer service at 1-800-462-8782, or the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Vehicle Safety Hotline at 1-888-327-4236.

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(HELENA, Mont.) — A TikTok ban enacted by Montana — the first state to impose such a law — marked a major step in the growing U.S. backlash against the Chinese-owned social media platform over concerns about data privacy.

Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte said he signed the measure on Wednesday to “protect Montanans’ personal and private data from the Chinese Communist Party.”

TikTok serves hundreds of thousands of users in Montana and more than 5,000 businesses, TikTok spokesperson Brooke Oberwetter told ABC News.

In a statement, Oberwetter denounced the ban and reminded users in Montana that they remain allowed to use the app.

“Governor Gianforte has signed a bill that infringes on the First Amendment rights of the people of Montana by unlawfully banning TikTok,” she said. “We want to reassure Montanans that they can continue using TikTok to express themselves, earn a living, and find community as we continue working to defend the rights of our users inside and outside of Montana.”

Here’s what to know about the TikTok ban in Montana, according to experts:

How can Montana ban TikTok?

The Montana ban, which takes effect in January 2024, does not prevent current users from accessing the app or penalize them for doing so.

Instead, the ban targets the availability of the app by threatening entities such as TikTok, Google and Apple with a $10,000 fine for each day that the platform remains accessible in app stores for users in Montana.

“This is not doing anything with respect to existing users,” Sarah Kreps, director of Cornell University’s Tech Policy Institute, told ABC News, noting however that the law will hinder current users eventually as they fail to download new updates to the app.

“Users need updates to have TikTok run smoothly and efficiently,” Kreps said. “Over time, it will have a siphoning off effect on these existing users.”

The law will be nullified if TikTok is no longer headquartered in “any country designated as a foreign adversary” by the U.S. government.

How will Montana enforce the TikTok ban?

State officials will be able to enforce the law by observing whether app stores display TikTok for users in Montana, and the relevant companies should be largely capable of identifying where users reside and denying access accordingly, experts said.

However, users in Montana will likely be able to elude the restrictions by using technology that falsifies their location and allows them to download the app, they added.

“There’s this myth that because there are technical workarounds with the internet, the law doesn’t matter,” Timothy Edgar, a computer science professor at Brown University and a former national security official, told ABC News. “That’s not true.”

Still, users could likely circumvent the ban through the use of a Virtual Private Network, or VPN, which allows one to pose as a user logging on from a different location, thereby circumventing the state-specific ban, experts said.

The outcome of enforcement is ultimately difficult to predict, since a state has never carried out a comparable ban of a widely popular app, Kreps added.

“Montana is really pioneering here,” she said.

Can the TikTok ban in Montana withstand a legal challenge?

The TikTok ban in Montana will likely face a formidable challenge on First Amendment grounds that could ultimately knock down part or all of the measure, experts said.

Free speech advocacy groups such as the ACLU have sharply criticized the measure. “We will never trade our First Amendment rights for cheap political points,” Keegan Medrano, policy director at the ACLU of Montana, said in a statement on Wednesday.

When considering a limit on speech, courts typically weigh the extent of a national security or privacy concern against the restriction placed on expression, Edgar said.

“The court will say this clearly has an impact on the expression rights of TikTok users and creators, so what’s the government’s compelling justification?” Edgar said.

“That’s the big challenge,” he added.

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(ORLANDO, Fla.) — Disney announced on Thursday that it canceled plans for a new campus near Orlando, Florida.

The development was planned for the Lake Nona region.

“Given the considerable changes that have occurred since the announcement of this project, including new leadership and changing business conditions, we have decided not to move forward with construction of the campus,” Disney said in a statement.

However, the company affirmed its commitment to additional expansion.

“We have plans to invest $17 billion and create 13,000 jobs over the next ten years,” the memo said. “I hope we’re able to do so.”

The Lake Nona campus, announced in 2021, was set to host employees from Disney’s Parks, Experiences and Products division. The company previously delayed the opening of the campus to 2026.

As part of the plans, Disney asked roughly 2,000 Southern California-based employees to relocate to the planned 60-acre campus. The company will no longer be calling for the employees to relocate, the memo on Thursday said.

“For those who have already moved, we will talk to you individually about your situation, including the possibility of moving you back,” the memo added.

The announcement comes amid an ongoing dispute between Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Disney over the company’s special district in the state.

Disney sued DeSantis last month, claiming that he had carried out a “relentless campaign to weaponize government power” against the company over a disagreement stemming from the state’s Parental Rights in Education law, which critics dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill before it was passed and signed into law.

Last year, Disney publicly opposed the bill, which restricts in-class discussion of gender and sexual orientation.

Afterward, DeSantis sharply criticized the company’s 56-year-old special district, formerly known as the Reedy Creek Financial District, which gave Disney autonomy over issues, such as fire protection, policing, waste management, energy generation, road maintenance, bond issuance and development planning.

DeSantis is expected to formally enter the 2024 presidential race next week, two sources familiar with the plans told ABC News.

Disney is the parent company of ABC News.

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(NEW YORK) — When Ashtin Gamblin remembers the night she was shot nine times, she can picture herself lying in the ambulance and worrying about whether she could afford it.

“That’s how the American medical system is,” she told ABC News. “I just got shot and I’m concerned about how I’m going to pay for the ambulance ride.”

Gamblin worked at the front door of Club Q, a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs where an attack last November left five dead and dozens injured. Bullets pierced Gamblin’s arms and chest, sending her to the hospital for an emergency surgery and a six-day hospital stay, she said.

After returning home, Gamblin received a letter telling her that the health care costs totaled $300,000 and her private insurance wouldn’t cover it.

Gamblin is one of hundreds injured in mass shootings each year. As of May, the nation had played host to 184 mass shootings this year, which left 248 dead and 744 injured, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

While data for the cost of mass shooting-related injuries is limited, the treatment for health care tied to gun violence totals billions each year, drawing on public and private insurance ultimately paid by the nation’s taxpayers and employers, experts told ABC News.

“The human toll but also the financial toll that results from these types of injuries is massive,” Patrick Carter, a professor of emergency medicine at the University of Michigan and co-director of the Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention, told ABC News.

Treatment for the first year after a gun attack raised medical spending for survivors by an average of $30,000, a fourfold increase from the costs incurred by a given individual over a typical year, according to a study released last year by Zirui Song and a group of colleagues at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital.

Accounting for roughly 85,000 gun violence survivors each year, the added cost of the initial treatment totaled $2.5 billion, the study found.

“These are costs that society has to incur,” Song told ABC News.

Ninety-six percent of the added health care costs fell to public insurance programs such as Medicare and Medicaid and other insurance programs such as workplace compensation, as well as private insurance coverage offered by an employer, Song said, noting that the remaining 4% came out of pocket from victims who lacked insurance or opted to cover the health care themselves.

Between 2010 and 2022, the cost of initial hospital treatment for gun violence victims in New York City was borne primarily by Medicare and Medicaid, which covered at least 70% of the costs, according to a study published in December by Gina Moreno, a senior research analyst at the Research and Evaluation Center at John Jay College.

Since Medicare and Medicaid receive funding from the federal government, the costs fall on taxpayers nationwide, Moreno told ABC News.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re a person in a small town in Utah, you as a taxpayer are covering someone who gets hurt in Queens,” Moreno said.

Such findings account for only a portion of the costs, however, since they exclude long-term treatment as well as indirect effects, such as lost income or resources required to support family members, experts said.

In an effort to account for the broader range of costs, advocacy group Everytown found in a report last year that gun violence costs the U.S. $557 billion each year, which amounts to about 2.6% of the country’s gross domestic product. Roughly $12.6 billion is paid by taxpayers, the group found.

The study incorporated short-term and long-term health care costs, as well as resources required for the criminal justice system and a monetary equivalent for pain and suffering, the organization said.

“Regardless of the firearm injury, there are long-term consequences that persist for a lifetime,” said Carter. “Those fall largely on our health insurance system.”

The health effects of mass shooting injuries extend to family members, too. Over a year-long period after a gun-related injury, family members of the victims experienced a 12% increase in psychiatric disorders, Song and his colleagues found.

“These firearms have a breadth of ripple effects across families, employers and society,” Song said. “This touches everyone.”

After the attack at Club Q, Gamblin had doctor appointments five days a week, she said. Currently, she receives 20 hours of weekly in-home care as well as psychiatric treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, she added.

She estimates that her health care costs since the attack total more than $1 million. Ultimately, she received coverage from workers compensation and private insurance but the process has taken a toll, she said.

“In a perfect world, I wouldn’t be concerned about paying for this,” she said. “I didn’t ask for this.”

ABC News’ Kiara Alfonseca contributed reporting.

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(WASHINGTON) — Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., on Thursday called for firings at the Federal Reserve over the central bank’s failure to regulate Silicon Valley Bank in the run-up to its collapse.

The imperative from Scott came during Senate testimony from Michael Barr, the Fed’s vice chair for supervision, who faced scrutiny from members of both major parties over his admitted failure to lead proper oversight of Silicon Valley Bank.

Barr authored a report last month that faulted the Fed’s lax oversight and an inability to anticipate the systemic threat posed by the bank’s failure.

In his testimony on Thursday, Barr took “full responsibility” for the inadequate performance of the Fed. Soon after, Scott responded: “Who did you fire?”

Barr said: “We have not fired someone as a result of this review.”

“We plan to conduct further review of our supervisory structure and as we do that we’ll be making sure we have the right personnel in place to get the job done,” he added.

Indicating dissatisfaction, Scott said, “I hope that includes making room for the right personnel by removing the wrong personnel.”

The collapse in March of Silicon Valley Bank, the nation’s 16th largest bank, set off a financial panic that led to the failure two days later of another major lender, Signature Bank.

The financial stress continues to weigh on the banking system. Late last month, regional lender First Republic Bank was seized and sold to JPMorgan Chase after a sudden downfall.

The Fed report described Silicon Valley Bank as “an outlier” for its degree of financial exposure and mismanagement, but the report criticized the central bank for failing to recognize and address such risks before it was too late.

“Our first area of focus will be to improve the speed, force, and agility of supervision,” Barr said in the report.

The report also criticized the Fed for underestimating the systemic risk posed by the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, suggesting that regulators overlooked the panic that could result from a bank concentrated in a slice of the tech industry.

“The buck stops here,” Barr told the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday. “I’m committed to fixing the problems we’ve had in supervision and regulation going forward.”

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(NEW YORK) — A group of music artists that includes legends like Whitney Houston, through her estate, and Bob Dylan have sold all or part of their song catalogs in recent years — a trend experts say has become more popular as artists seek to cash in on their copyrights and, in some cases, breathe new life into their past hits.

“Artists, creators, owners of the copyrights can slice and dice these catalogs in a million different ways,” Variety music editor Jem Aswad told ABC News. “Sometimes they’ll just sell the publishing. Sometimes they’ll just sell the recorded music rights.”

In 2021, Bruce Springsteen reportedly sold his catalog to Sony for more than $500 million. Others capitalizing on the trend include Neil Young and David Bowie and more modern artists like Justin Timberlake and John Legend. Even Justin Bieber, at just 28 years old, reportedly sold his catalog for a staggering $200 million.

“Music catalogs are a very complicated asset. The value changes all the time. It fluctuates,” Aswad said.

But for older artists, selling their catalogs can help with estate planning to take the burden off their heirs once they’re gone, Aswad said.

Then there are artists like Taylor Swift, who famously re-recorded her entire catalog to maintain the rights over her work after the recordings of her first six albums were sold without her consent.

“She’s sort of the rising tide lifts all boats because, yes, all of this was in her self-interest. But she has educated countless musicians and countless fans about the value of owning your own creative work,” Aswad said.

Larry Mestel, CEO of Primary Wave, one of the leading independent music publishers, said he recognizes that value, which is why his company rarely buys 100% of an artist’s catalog. The company owns a percentage of Houston’s catalogs, as well as Air Supply, Stevie Nicks, Prince, Bob Marley, James Brown, Def Leppard and Kurt Cobain, among many others.

Mestel said he founded the company in 2006 because a lot of legendary artists “were not being focused on by their major labels.”

“We do not create, we do not market without an artist’s approval,” Mestel said.

Mestel said he often builds partnerships with the artists to build on their reputation or brand.

The Houston estate, helmed by Pat Houston, Whitney Houston’s sister-in-law and former manager, began working with Primary Wave in 2019.

“We’ve done a biographical film. We have a new gospel album. We have a Broadway show in development,” Mestel said.

“It has to feel right. And I would not do anything that I didn’t think she would be proud of,” Pat Houston said.

One of the first meetings with Houston’s estate and Primary Wave involved going through her old recordings, where they found a track called “Higher Love.” The result was a chart-topping song, remixed by Kygo, seven years after Houston’s death, re-introducing a new generation to her talent.

Still, it can be a gamble for artists to sell their catalogs in the event they become even more valuable over time.

“If the air starts to come out of the catalog market, people will think, ‘OK, I sold at a really good time. Conversely, if things continue to heat up, they’ll be like, ‘Oh damn, I should have waited,’” Aswad said.

Rock duo Air Supply, which has been putting out anthemic love songs for almost 50 years, also has embraced the partnership with Primary Wave, collaborating on an AAA ad that featured their hit 1980 song “All Out of Love.”

“At first we said, ‘No, we don’t want to do that. Songwriters and recording artists should own their own catalog and their own songs. But we started to think about it and it started to make sense,” said guitarist Graham Russell.

“The songs will always be mine, because they’re my babies. But why not let them go out into the universe?” he said.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — With high inflation over the past year and many people looking for ways to keep budgets in check, some are turning to social media as a forum to share and find ideas to save some cash.

TikTokers like Daniela Martinez and Ana Marcks are among the many online video creators to jump on the latest financial trend and share the breakdown of their payday routine, including breaking down their paychecks, accounting for their bills, daily expenses and even a leisurely day out.

Marcks, known to her followers on TikTok as The Budget Asian, gives users an intimate look at her personal cost of living — down to the pennies.

“I spent $10.79 on two donuts and a coffee … [A baseball game] ticket was $18 and I spent $20.36 on these chicken fingers,” Marcks shared in a recent video, laying out her day.

For beginner budgeters, Marcks suggested sticking to the 50-30-20 method to best prioritize your needs, wants and savings.

“Half of your take-home income would be for needs, 30% for wants and then 20% for savings,” she explained.

Michael Liersch, the head of advice and planning at Wells Fargo Wealth and Investment Management, told ABC News’ Good Morning America that the online trend provides important transparency into the reality of saving money.

“[The trend] really creates this sense of not only social accountability, but it also teaches everyone else about what is actually working and what is actually not working when it comes to people’s financial lives,” he said.

According to a March 2023 survey, roughly 60% of consumers reported that they live paycheck-to-paycheck, with 66% of those consumers being Gen Zers.

Marcks said budgeting has brought her a newfound sense of independence.

“I used to spend my money on things I didn’t need, and honestly, I wasn’t very happy about it,” she said. “I feel more in control of not just money, but overall, like who I am. I feel like I have more autonomy.”

She added that personal budgeting is often contagious and can benefit more than just one individual.

“Even with my friends, they might want to go to a dinner and I might say, ‘It’s 50% cheaper to go to a happy hour, can we do that?'” she said. “It’s benefited everyone in my life and forced us to become a little bit more creative.”

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(NEW YORK) — When it comes to marketing hooks, “Taco Tuesday” may be among the most well-known and successful tactics to entice diners with a delicious deal on a beloved Mexican food.

Now, California-based fast food giant Taco Bell has filed a new petition to do away with a trademark registration on the food-centric phrase.

“Tacos have the unique ability to bring people together and bring joy to their lives on an otherwise mediocre day of the week: Taco Tuesday. But since 1989, ‘Taco Tuesday’ has been registered as a trademark, creating potential legal consequences for those that want to use the phrase,” Taco Bell said in a press release on May 16.

Taco Bell’s petition, filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Trial and Appeal Board, asks U.S. regulators to force Wyoming-headquartered fast food chain Taco John’s to do away with its claim to the trademark.

“The essence of ‘Taco Tuesday’ is to celebrate the commonality amongst people of all walks of life who come together every week to celebrate something as simple, yet culturally phenomenal, as the taco,” Taco Bell wrote.

Taco Bell said it is not seeking damages or trademark rights of its own, stating it “simply seeks common sense for usage of a common term.”

The fast food chain stated in the filing that its entities “must be able to promote their goods and services using the generic, informational term ‘Taco Tuesday’ to compete effectively in the marketplace.”

In response to Taco Bell’s filing, Taco John’s announced a new two-week Taco Tuesday promotion on social media, offering two crispy or soft-shell beef tacos to those who download the Taco John’s app and join its Bigger Bolder Rewards program.

Taco John’s holds the trademark in the entire United States except for New Jersey. Taco Bell has also filed a similar petition against Gregory’s Restaurant and Bar in Somers Point, New Jersey, which holds the trademark rights in New Jersey and has also used the term “Taco Tuesday” for over 40 years.

Taco Bell, which is owned by Yum! Brands, has more than 7,200 locations globally. Taco John’s, which started as a food truck over 50 years ago, has nearly 370 restaurant locations across the Midwest.

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(NEW YORK) — OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, whose company developed the widely used AI conversation program ChatGPT, warned federal lawmakers Tuesday that artificial intelligence could pose significant risks to the world if the technology goes wrong.

“We understand that people are anxious about how it could change the way we live. We are, too. But we believe that we can and must work together to identify and manage the potential downsides, so that we can all enjoy the tremendous upsides,” Altman told a Senate committee on tech and privacy.

Altman also acknowledged the risks in a March interview with ABC News’ Rebecca Jarvis, saying he was “a little bit scared” of the type of technology his own company is developing. Despite the dangers, Altman said AI can also be “the greatest technology humanity has yet developed.”

Start Here host Brad Mielke spoke to Gizmodo technology reporter Thomas Germain, who broke down Altman’s testimony, discussing the risks and potential challenges with proposing and implementing regulations on the technology.

BRAD MIELKE: Thomas, can you just help me break down what happened in this hearing?

THOMAS GERMAIN: Yeah, it was a little unusual. Sam Altman went in front of Congress and he said, basically begged them to protect the public from the technology that he is creating, which can seem a little weird if you take it at face value. One of the things that I think is interesting about this, it’s actually not unusual for the tech industry to ask to be regulated. That’s exactly what we’ve seen on privacy issues.

Some of the biggest proponents of privacy laws are Microsoft and Google and Meta, in fact, because it gives tech companies a huge advantage if there are laws that they can comply with. That way, if something goes wrong, they can just say, ‘Oh well, we were following the rules. It’s the government’s fault for not passing better regulation.’

It was an interesting hearing. And one of the things that was unusual about it was how friendly and positive everything was for the most part. You know, if you’ve seen any of the other hearings from other tech CEOs, they’re usually pretty combative. But Sam Altman managed to buddy up with all of these lawmakers, and they agree on some things, which is that AI should be regulated. But exactly how? No one really seems to know. And there were some very vague proposals thrown around. But it really seems like an open question, what AI regulation would even mean?

MIELKE: It felt like the Spider-Man meme, where everyone’s pointing at each other being like, “You, you, me?” Because this will sound like a dumb question, although maybe it’s not, since you just said that. What would you even regulate? When it comes to AI, what are the things that are even on the table right now?

GERMAIN: Yeah, that’s a really good question. And the fact that there’s no good answer says a lot about the state of the technology, right? We have no idea what this technology is capable of. I’ve spoken to people who are heading up companies that are at the forefront of building this technology. And if you ask them how far it’s going to go, they really have no idea.

We don’t know what the hard technical limits of these tools are. We don’t really know whether they can replace all of human labor like we’ve been told we’re supposed to be so afraid of. But there are a couple of things that Congress could do. I think the most important thing when it comes to AI regulation is transparency, right? The public, or at least regulators, need to know what data sets AI models are being trained on, because there can be baked in problems, right? If you train an AI on a data set that includes all of the internet, for example, you’re going to get a lot of racism and hate speech and other unpleasant things in there, and that’ll be spat back out.

MIELKE: Oh, because the way AI works is like, “Hey, use this model, use all these books to teach yourself how to talk, chat bot.” And yet, if you’re not using the right books or only a very narrow set of books, all of a sudden it’s trickier.

GERMAIN: Yeah, that’s one of the interesting things about this kind of technology, right? I think people have this image of computers that they’re really smart and they’re better than people. But really, it’s garbage in, garbage out. Whatever you feed in AI, it’s going to spit a similar thing back out. And we’ve seen that with other technologies, where they just repeat biases that are baked in.

Another big one is copyright issues. We really have no good answer whether an artist whose work goes into creating one of these models should be compensated or who owns the products of a tool like Chat GPT’s work. Congress really needs to answer that question and, if they don’t, the people who are going to answer it will be the Supreme Court. And our system is not designed for the court to be writing laws. That’s Congress’ job. So they really need to step up there.

And the last thing I think is picking out individual areas where there are particularly high risks. And this is what AI regulation proposals in the EU have been like. There are specific rules about issues like hiring decisions, banking, health care, the military, police, for example. How can and should cops be allowed to use this technology? That’s something we’ve seen with facial recognition. It’s gone totally off the rails.

MIELKE: I was about to ask for an example because it sounds like when you talk about hiring, it would be like sifting through all these resumes and figuring out who the best person is for your job. And yet, maybe you’re leaving out like a group of people that should not have been dismissed like that.

GERMAIN: That’s exactly right. Or maybe, you know, the person who designs the AI has a preference for male employees. So when the AI is going through and picking who the most qualified candidate is, it’ll end up doing that. I mean, then it’s not even about the person’s bias, right? If you look at the history of employment, men tend to be paid at higher rates and be more likely to be hired for particular kinds of jobs. If you train an AI on a data set of all the existing employees in the world, it’ll end up replicating the problems that already exist in our society.

MIELKE: So then, you say, here are some things that the government could regulate. Will they regulate it? Because I got to say, listening to the lawmakers here, and we’ve talked about before with like some of these old senators, it doesn’t sound like they’re particularly keen on getting involved in this.

GERMAIN: No, we’ve been talking about regulating privacy, for example, for the better part of a decade, and we’re no closer to a law today than we were a couple of years ago. And I think that speaks to a broader issue, which is a lot of the problems of AI are the problems of society. This technology could make the rich richer. It could make the poor poorer. It could replicate a lot of society’s worst impulses, from misinformation to discrimination, any number of issues. And Congress hasn’t addressed those problems as they stand today, let alone what technology will look like in the future. So in terms of regulating, I would start with the problems that we already have as opposed to some future hypothetical about what this tech will be like. Will Congress do that? I’m not hopeful. They don’t seem to be able to get anything done, let alone wrapping their minds around an entirely new technology.

MIELKE: As Congress is sort of like, would you like to take the lead on this? And the head of OpenAI is like, “No, no, I have a job.” All right, Thomas Germain from Gizmodo, thank you so much.

GERMAIN: Thanks for having me on.

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