Today, I\u2019m talking with Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, who has a lot of thoughts about AI, tech, and privacy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
If you\u2019ve been listening to the show, you know that one of my running theories is that those issues are driving a big and maybe kind of unexpected political realignment \u2014 and with the midterms coming up next month, and early voting already underway in a lot of places, the stakes are pretty high right now.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
So I asked Gov. Pritzker about all that, and he was surprisingly willing to dive right into the absolute existential weeds of what government is even for. You\u2019ll hear him say \u2014 and it\u2019s hard to disagree \u2014 that some problems are just collective action problems that require the government to do a lot of work. We can\u2019t solve all these problems one at a time, or even one state at a time. It\u2019s a pretty deep conversation, and we really got into it on a lot of issues.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
And of course, I had to ask him: Are the Bears gonna stay in Illinois?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Before we get going, do me a favor and subscribe to Decoder<\/em> on YouTube<\/a>, where we put out new episodes every Monday and Thursday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Okay: Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker. Here we go.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Gov. JB Pritzker, you\u2019re the governor of Illinois. Welcome to<\/strong> Decoder<\/em>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Thanks, Nilay. Great to be with you.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I am very excited to talk to you. We\u2019re in the heart of midterm season. You are running for reelection. I have to tell you. I have to be very honest with you. I personally feel a lot of pressure in this interview, not only because I\u2019m speaking to a governor, but because I went to school in Chicago. My sister still lives in Chicago. My wife grew up in Illinois. Her entire family is farmers in North Central Illinois. Boy, do I have a list of questions for you. I have to do a good job here.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Well, we\u2019re claiming you. Now that I know all that, we\u2019re claiming you. You\u2019re an Illinoisan.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Verge<\/em> subscribers, don\u2019t forget you get exclusive access to ad-free Decoder<\/em> wherever you get your podcasts. Head here<\/a>. Not a subscriber? You can sign up here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n I don\u2019t know about that. I grew up in Wisconsin. Here\u2019s my first question for you. I\u2019m a die-hard Packers fan. Are you going to let the Bears move to Indiana?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n That is not our intention. We are, in fact, in discussions with the Bears and the NFL about keeping the Bears either in Chicago or in Arlington Heights, but in Illinois.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I\u2019m saying, as a Packers fan, nothing is funnier than the outcome of the Bears moving to Indiana. I just want to put that out there. Openly biased in this case \u2014 I own two shares of that stock \u2014 but I\u2019m going to make the comparison here. And the reason I started there is not only because I think that\u2019s a funny outcome, although I do, but it feels like we are in the middle of a generational political realignment.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n I\u2019m sure you feel that, in this election campaign, the idea of big business and how that should interact with the government, and how the government should be able to push back on big business and not give in to big business. All of that feels up for grabs.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n And the comparison I will make in this specific case is your fellow governor, Gavin Newsom, in California. They sued the Ellison family, Paramount, over the Warner Brothers merger. Paramount threatened to leave. They made a lot of noise about Nashville, Texas, Miami, or wherever you make noise about these days, and it feels like Newsom caved. It feels like he pressured his Attorney General, Rob Bonta, to settle that lawsuit and keep them there.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n They settled the lawsuit. The next day, the Ellison family is like, \u201cWe never… We\u2019re from California. We would never leave.\u201d I see a parallel here with the Bears that is connected to that larger realignment, how government and business should interact. Do you see that parallel? Do you feel that realignment?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Well, what I can tell you is we\u2019re pretty tough negotiators in Chicago and Illinois, and that\u2019s really what we\u2019re in the midst of now with the Bears. But I understand your point about realignment. I mean, there is a generational change, and I think it\u2019s also an attitudinal change about protecting taxpayers, protecting people who frankly are among the most vulnerable to all the technology that\u2019s overtaking people\u2019s lives and invading people\u2019s homes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n And so I do believe that the government has to be more active now and become a fighter for our people and not just a collaborator with business on everything. I\u2019m a businessman, as you know, before I became governor. But I also know that, for the people of Illinois anyway, my job is to protect the working people of this state who often don\u2019t have anybody protecting them except a government that will stand up for them. So that\u2019s kind of the realignment that I see.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n And that generational shift, I agree with you. It\u2019s partly a Democratic Party generational shift. Generationally, we\u2019re a little more aggressive. And I\u2019m probably older than the next generation that\u2019s already possibly taking office this November. I\u2019m 61 years old, but I think of myself as having come out of the tech world and as somebody who has been a fighter for progressive values that, yeah, we\u2019ve got to become more aggressive and make sure we\u2019re standing up for our people.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n There are two places where I see the realignment in particular. One is data centers, one is privacy, and you just see that as a bipartisan backlash to those things. I would actually add a third, which is antitrust broadly. It\u2019s weird if you go into Silicon Valley. David Sacks is retweeting Lina Khan from the Biden administration talking about whether the AI industry needs an antitrust exemption to manage safety.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n They both agree that these companies don\u2019t need antitrust exemptions. They actually should be more competitive. Again, putting that in the context of regulating these companies, thinking about the dynamic between the government and the biggest companies in the world. I\u2019ll just ask the question, I guess, more directly. Do you think Newsom was right to give in to Paramount, or do you think he should have forced them to make good on that threat to leave?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n I can\u2019t speak to the Paramount situation well enough to give you an answer, so it would be unfair for me to do so. I can say once again that our orientation today \u2014 and I think about the big AI companies and the big social media companies as well \u2014 has to be like, wait a minute, too much power in too few hands.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Particularly when we talk about AI, where it\u2019s potentially existential, but certainly transformative, which is probably a kind way to say it about the economy, that we\u2019re going to have to get very engaged. Guardrails, of course, on both parts, but also addressing what I think on the AI front is potentially a significant change in employment in the United States. I\u2019m not somebody who is necessarily convinced that we have to see a whole bunch of job loss, but that does feel like that\u2019s the direction this is going.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n What I\u2019m suggesting is we better be prepared, and we better be protecting people who are going to lose their jobs, or at least it appears they\u2019re going to lose their jobs. And I\u2019ll just give you this thought. If these days 4 percent unemployment is kind of the acceptable near full employment number, I think the problem we\u2019re going to see is \u2014 if that\u2019s sort of the level that we\u2019re going to hopefully aim for and stay at \u2014 that in very short order, we could end up at 7 percent and have that be the baseline, or maybe 10 percent.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n And if you think about what\u2019s happened, the upheavals of economies and of governments when you get to 10 percent unemployment in any country. We better be focused on how we\u2019re going to give people the dignity of work and enough income so that they can make a life for themselves when you\u2019re going to put people out of work by virtue of this technology. By the way, much of the benefit of that is going to go to a very, very few people. So we\u2019ve got to wrestle with that and come to a conclusion.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I wanted to start with some of the brinksmanship we have seen in the negotiations between, particularly, states and the big companies, because that brinksmanship is real. The threat is we will leave. We just covered, I don\u2019t know, Kevin O\u2019Leary in Utah talking about data centers, and<\/strong> the people of Utah really pushed back<\/strong><\/a> against Kevin O\u2019Leary building that data center. But his argument was, \u201cWell, I\u2019m just going to shop around.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n This is what states do. They compete with tax incentives and benefits, maybe for data centers, which will put everyone out of a job. They compete for land use rights. You\u2019ve got a rural state with a lot of farms in it. How are you thinking about that dynamic? Do you feel like you\u2019re in competition with the other states, or is this bipartisan realignment creating more of a level playing field where these companies are going to have to actually give something?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n We are in competition. We just are because it isn\u2019t bipartisan, at least if you ask me. Unless there is a change in the government. I\u2019ll pick on Texas for a second, and there is a chance that you\u2019ll see a new governor in Texas as of November 3rd. In fact, a good chance. But if you look at Texas as it\u2019s run today by a three-term, hoping to be a four-term, Republican governor and a Republican legislature, they have no intention of changing their alignment about incentives.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In the state of Illinois, we don\u2019t want to have to do that. I mean, we obviously want to protect the revenue that we\u2019ve got for the state to pay for the things we think are valuable to our people, but we also want to make sure that we\u2019re attracting jobs and not losing jobs. And in a world where South Carolina, Michigan, Texas, Florida \u2014 pick your poison. Michigan may be slightly different just because it\u2019s got democratic control, but these are our competitors. When I\u2019m competing to have a company move to Illinois, I\u2019ve got to make sure, first of all, that I\u2019m somewhere in the ballpark when it comes to the incentives, because otherwise we don\u2019t even get considered.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n And then when I say somewhere in the ballpark, I mean, I want to give away less than more, and then I want to provide whatever other advantages I can that aren\u2019t financial so that I can protect the resources that we have. An example of that is, we like to talk about a kind of white-glove service that we offer to companies. If you\u2019re going to bring a factory here, let\u2019s say, just to give an example, we want to make sure that we\u2019ve got somebody who\u2019s kind of a concierge for your company that\u2019s walking you through each of our departments where you need a permit. It doesn\u2019t mean we\u2019re lowering the standards. It just means, a lot of times, the bureaucracy eats up so much time that it makes it impossible for a company to actually do what they want to do in your state.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n We try to make sure that if we\u2019re going to attract a large company, with 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 jobs, that we\u2019re at least making it a little easier for them to go through without having to give them massive tax incentives. So that\u2019s the way I think about it. We are in competition. There\u2019s just no doubt about it. Should we be? There\u2019s a lot of discussion about whether we shouldn\u2019t, and maybe at the federal level we should do something about leveling the playing field, but this is the world we\u2019re living in right now.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I wanted to ask those questions just to set the baseline. I really do think something is happening. A lot of young people are dissatisfied with the status quo. A lot of people in general are dissatisfied with what big tech companies are trying to do with AI, with the potential for job loss.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n And the relationship between the people, the government, and those companies seems more fraught than ever, especially as they\u2019re trying to expand their physical infrastructure with data centers, as they all become defense contractors, literally taking our tax dollars to sell weapon systems and collect data for the government. That\u2019s a big swirl.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n I wanted to start there, but I just want to take one second here and ask you the<\/strong> Decoder<\/em><\/strong> questions because I personally think the operation of government is so opaque. It\u2019s very easy to figure out how big companies are run. The CEOs won\u2019t shut up. They\u2019re on podcasts all day long. I think most people have no idea how your job works.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n So you were elected governor. How is your office set up, and how have you structured the state government of Illinois?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Just starting from where I sit, and then, of course, we look at it from a customer service perspective. But starting just at the top, I actually did something that no governor of Illinois has ever done \u2014 which is that I created not just one deputy governor. We obviously have a lieutenant governor who\u2019s elected also, but a deputy governor is somebody getting appointed by me to serve under me, to help manage the government with me. What I did was put four deputy governors in place, a general counsel, and my chief of staff.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Why is that important? Because what I\u2019ve tried to do is to break down the silos of government. I took all of the health and human services-related departments \u2014 that\u2019s the Department of Public Health, the Department of Human Services, the Department of Healthcare and Family Services, everything from health insurance, Medicaid, and public health during the pandemic \u2014 and put it all under one deputy governor working directly for me. The idea is that instead of my having, let\u2019s say, 26 direct reports, I\u2019ve got four or five direct reports plus my chief of staff, who each have, let\u2019s say, six or seven departments underneath them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n From my perspective, what I wanted to do was make sure that I\u2019m breaking down the silos of government, making these departments that are often building walls, and they don\u2019t want to talk to one another because they\u2019re afraid they might lose jobs in one department to another department, or lose control of a program if they\u2019re talking to one another. That\u2019s the way it used to be. Now we\u2019re like the deputy governor is there to either beat the heads together or at least bring them together so that they will be operating the government more efficiently. Okay, so that\u2019s from the top.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n From the bottom, which is: how do people who live in Illinois interact with the state government? And obviously, technology is one of the upgrades that\u2019s occurred and made it easier. Illinois, frankly, had not significantly invested in those processes before I became governor, or in the technology that was necessary. And I\u2019ll just give you one example of this: We created something called BEACON, which is designed to address the problem that parents and families have with mental health for children. It turns out that there were seven different ways in which people approached the government to get help, and we weren\u2019t coordinating those, and we weren\u2019t helping to provide all of the resources.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I\u2019m talking about outside resources. How do you find a therapist? How do you find a psychiatrist? And how do you pay for those things? Medicaid, if you can\u2019t afford it on your own. But the point is, there\u2019s one door to enter through BEACON that allows you to get access to all of those resources, even if they\u2019re in multiple departments. So that\u2019s just one example. We\u2019re trying to think of this as a customer service operation. It\u2019s one thing to say this is how the org chart looks and another thing to say, this is how you access all the resources of the government that you need.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n We provide programs that really matter to people. We have a birth equity initiative to reduce maternal mortality, particularly in Black and Brown communities. And free diapers for some people. The problem is, people don\u2019t even know that the programs exist, and how would you ever figure out that the programs exist, especially if you\u2019re a working person who\u2019s working two minimum-wage jobs? You don\u2019t have any time, and you don\u2019t have any money, and you don\u2019t even know how to talk to the government. And so we\u2019re trying to fix all of those problems of the government with the way that we interact with people.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It\u2019s funny. It feels like that is one of the bigger opportunities when it comes to AI, just letting the AI navigate a bureaucracy for you and communicate what resources are available. The flip side of that is that people hate AI. They truly dislike it, and it doesn\u2019t feel like that connection has been made \u2014 that a lot of these tools can actually just navigate a bureaucracy for you. Are you thinking that should be an investment that you make, that it might be what turns the tide in terms of how people feel about these tools?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Yes, but I\u2019m not plunging headlong into it. And I realize that there are probably states that are plunging headlong into it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I mean, the United States government rolled out<\/strong> its AI chatbot<\/strong><\/a> to look at webpages across the government.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n I guess what I\u2019m trying to do is make sure that\u2026 I created something called the AI Cabinet in my government, and that is to essentially bring the experts on AI together with the leaders of my mainstay agencies of state government, so that we\u2019re thinking about privacy, safety, and efficiency. And those things have to be talked about together. You can\u2019t just say we\u2019re going after efficiency and we don\u2019t really care about the other two.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n So that\u2019s the idea, the AI cabinet. It\u2019s also that, honestly, there are things, as you know, about AI that are dangerous. And so we\u2019ve got our emergency management agency on that AI cabinet. We\u2019ve got our state police on that AI cabinet. And remember, a lot of the people that work in those agencies aren\u2019t particularly proficient at AI or really understand the potential and the potential dangers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n That\u2019s why we brought in experts, for example, from the University of Chicago, the University of Illinois, just as two examples of places where we\u2019re drawing expertise. So yeah, there\u2019s a lot to be done. I would say we\u2019re trying to approach it carefully before it gets out of control to a point where we have no way to pull it back in.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The other<\/strong> Decoder<\/em><\/strong> question I ask everybody is about decisions. You have a big job. You have some constraints in your decision-making process, right? There\u2019s a state legislature, there\u2019s a federal government, you have other agencies in your state. How do you make decisions? What\u2019s your framework?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Well, I don\u2019t do it the way Donald Trump does.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It\u2019s funny you say it that way. I guess I start with the idea that we have a problem to solve and that decisions have to get made. Are those decisions ones that need to come to the governor? Because you\u2019re right, I only have so much bandwidth. So the question is: which are the most serious ones that can\u2019t be solved by other people, or are unlikely to get the outcomes that I would want by handing them over to other people? And then those automatically come to me.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n So what I\u2019m making decisions about is kind of the first answer to your question, and then it\u2019s how do I actually make the decisions? For me, I am not one of those people who thinks that I\u2019m right 100 percent of the time. Maybe a good way to describe it, and I\u2019m joking a little bit when I say it, is that I\u2019m 90 percent sure I\u2019m right, but there\u2019s also a 10 percent chance that I\u2019m dead wrong. I want to make sure that I\u2019m getting input and a debate before I actually make the final decision.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Someone once told me that the best CEOs are ones that, in their organization, are a little bit below average in terms of their capability and intellect. I\u2019m not saying we want below-average leaders. I\u2019m just saying you\u2019re so good at hiring that you\u2019ve got people in your organization who are really far better than you are at various things that you\u2019re not particularly good at. Maybe knowing what you don\u2019t know and being willing to ask for help is a philosophy that I have. Be willing to ask for help if it\u2019s something you really don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n And I\u2019ll be honest, when you become governor of a state, there are a whole lot of topics within the purview of a governor. Making decisions about all those topics, maybe a human being who has super intelligence might be able to do it, but most people don\u2019t start out knowing everything there is to know about public health, public safety, and education. And so you start out with what you know and then try to add expertise to it and then make decisions based upon the best experts debating one another in front of you. At least that\u2019s how I like to do it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Give me an example. Governor Kathy Hochul from New York<\/strong> was on the show<\/strong><\/a>. She said in her first week she needed to declare a state of emergency because of a hurricane, and she just didn\u2019t know how, which was very humanizing in its way. Give me an example of when you became governor, and there was something where you just didn\u2019t know.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n I mean, honestly, no one runs for governor thinking there\u2019s going to be a global pandemic. You think you\u2019re going to solve education problems for people or put more money in people\u2019s pockets by raising the minimum wage or whatever, but COVID comes along. And I have to admit, the level of expertise, I don\u2019t think any governor\u2026 Well, maybe Josh Green, the doctor who\u2019s the governor of Hawaii, maybe he had a lot to [of expertise] start with \u2014 but for the rest of us humans, that was one where we were learning on the job.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n We were working 18 hours per day. My entire team was all in, and we had to do things like emergency procurement of ventilators and masks, and we had to go outside the box. It\u2019s not like we could just put it through our central management services, look for a contract, or whatever. This was like, I need masks in three days.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I\u2019ll tell you a quick story, if you\u2019re interested, about my interaction with Donald Trump at the time because I think it\u2019s interesting, anyway. But I\u2019m not a big fan of Donald Trump, in case you didn\u2019t know. I was one year into office when the COVID pandemic hit, and I had not… I mean, I talked to his administration, but I didn\u2019t talk to him directly. So I picked up the phone and called him, and I said, \u201cMr. President.\u201d By the way, I wrote a script for myself because I know he likes to be flattered, and I\u2019m not somebody who normally likes to flatter him, but I wrote a script for myself. I saved it; I even have it today.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n And I said, \u201cMr. President, you\u2019re a great businessman, but you can understand that paying $8 for an N95 mask that should cost us 75 cents means we\u2019re in a national emergency. We need to be able to get these things and afford them, and I\u2019m competing against all the other states. We need to invoke the Defense Production Act in order to make sure that we\u2019re making enough masks in the United States.\u201d That\u2019s what I told him. And then I said, \u201cBut I need masks right now. What can you do for me?\u201d I said, \u201cI need 2 million N95 masks, and I need 4,000 ventilators.\u201d And he never delivered, just so you know, even though he promised that he would deliver.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The challenges in COVID were mighty, and the organization that we had to create around it\u2026 I had meetings every morning just on this topic, figuring out, okay, how many hospital beds [are available]? We didn\u2019t have a system that would tell us statewide how many hospital beds are available in each region. What happens if you have an outbreak and it really is overtaking some region? What do we do?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n And so these were all the things we had to learn on the fly. And all I can tell you is, once again, back to hiring great people to have around you, I really felt like I proved that I had done a good job of hiring because the people around me were tremendous. One of whom, by the way, is now running as my lieutenant governor partner in this election.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It\u2019s interesting you brought up COVID in the context of our conversation about generational political realignment. I would actually point to COVID as the beginning of a particular realignment around what the government should measure, how much control the government should have over people, and all of that has led, I think, directly into the bipartisan pushback against Flock cameras.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n The very notion of privacy is not, in my mind, left or right anymore. The CEO of Flock got himself in all kinds of trouble because he kept saying all the people who wanted to ban Flock cameras are criminals, and he would go on MAGA media and say this. I think that position was just rejected. We can see in states around the country that there\u2019s pushback against Flock cameras. I would point to COVID as the beginning of that.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n The idea that the government could be too intrusive, and in particular, the government should not be able to measure things. \u201cIf you don\u2019t test, there won\u2019t be COVID\u201d just became an idea. And the idea that we shouldn\u2019t measure things, or we should tear down our systems of measurement, is a big part of the second Trump administration. But I see that privacy connection very clearly to COVID. In one world, the government coming together to protect its citizens and build a bunch of systems could have gone a very different way. In the one we live in, there\u2019s ferocious pushback to that, on the left and the right in some ways. How do you feel about privacy right now?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n I know Illinois leads the nation. You\u2019ve got the Biometric Identification Protection Act. Every time I fly to Chicago, I\u2019ve got to push the button at the airport to say that it\u2019s okay to look at my face. That\u2019s one way of going about it. But then you do have, I think, hundreds of Flock cameras in Cook County alone. People have Meta glasses with cameras in them. There\u2019s something happening with privacy that is running right into the aftershocks of COVID and how people feel about government intrusion. How are you finding a way through that balance?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Well, and don\u2019t forget AI.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n As you\u2019re suggesting. I mean, talk about a collision. This focus on privacy is warranted and long overdue, to be honest with you. I understand what you\u2019re describing about COVID, but I think something that came out of COVID got accelerated, and that was conspiracy theories.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n And I\u2019m not suggesting that everything you hear now about the pushback around privacy is a conspiracy theory, but it is easy for these things to spread, and people have misinformation that\u2019s informing them about how these things are used. Having said that, I guess what I think is that we are having to solve multiple problems at the same time, and that AI is coming.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Let\u2019s just go to AI for a second. It\u2019s here. I mean, I say it\u2019s coming, but it\u2019s here. It\u2019s not going to stop. We\u2019re not going to become Luddites without any AI. So the question is, in the context of privacy, what guardrails are we putting on AI, and how are we managing it? This idea that the president and David Sacks had, where they got all the companies together and said, \u201cHey, how about you guys self-police?\u201d That\u2019s not going to work, at least not for protecting people\u2019s privacy. And frankly, it\u2019s not going to provide any safety either because everybody\u2019s going to operate in their own self-interest. It\u2019s one of the reasons why you need a government, in my view.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I\u2019m not suggesting the government is any smarter than these companies. But one of the reasons you have any kind of collective action of the government is because, separately, as you know, people operate in their own self-interest. I mean, you could have a Hobbesian world where people are killing each other, and there are no rules about it. So I think we\u2019ve got to use the government as a tool and also be smart within the government. And that\u2019s where the generational change, I think, is hugely important. Use the government as a smarter, less bureaucratic collection of people devoted to protecting the privacy of everyone and making sure that we\u2019re addressing all the other challenges that come from AI.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n So I guess I\u2019ll just say, I don\u2019t think we\u2019re anywhere near where we need to be, but I will say, if we don\u2019t have a federal government, now I\u2019ve got a lot of… I\u2019m very proud of the things that we\u2019ve done here in Illinois around the AI Safety Measures Act, which is the toughest in the country, the Children\u2019s Social Media Safety Act, and so on. I\u2019m proud of the work we\u2019ve done, but state by state, this is not the way to do this. We\u2019re doing the best we can in the absence of a federal government that is addressing these issues.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n And when I say federal government, I\u2019m not just pointing at Trump. I\u2019m pointing at Congress. No action on their part means that we\u2019re going at it alone. And right now, I don\u2019t know how many AI safety measure acts have been passed, but it looks like three to me. I mean, it\u2019s New York, California, and Illinois. Maybe you could name a couple of others, but we three were the first. And yet, we\u2019ve got 47 other states.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This worries me a great deal. You\u2019re raising issues, and I\u2019d love to tell you I have all the answers. I can tell you what we\u2019re trying to think about is that we are the\u2026 People sometimes say that the states are laboratories of democracy. They\u2019re actually laboratories of policy, and we are trying to, at least in Illinois, use ourselves as a laboratory for policy while not creating disadvantage for ourselves. And so that\u2019s a very challenging thing to do, and why we need to change what\u2019s happening at the federal government.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Focus on privacy for one second. I understand what you\u2019re saying about AI. I think part of the privacy debate around Flock cameras, for example, is, well, sure, you can have one license plate reader in one intersection. And if the cops had to go there and pull the SD card out of it, drive it back to headquarters, upload it to their Apple IIe, and look at it manually, maybe people would feel one way about it.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n But those cameras are all networked. They don\u2019t have any access controls really. There are infinite reports of local police chiefs tracking their girlfriends across state lines with these cameras. You add in a system like Palantir, which can synthesize multiple databases and do all kinds of tracking across all kinds of systems. People see that.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n The turn that is being made is that you can connect a lot of databases of information together, search them without a warrant, and track people across the entire country. You could ban that state by state. You could regulate it city by city, which we\u2019re seeing happen with Flock, and you could maybe have some federal controls around privacy there. None of it\u2019s really happening, but on the ground, people are ferociously pushing back. And that\u2019s the connection I\u2019m making to COVID, conspiracy theories, and how much power the government should have to surveil you and look at you.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Something happened in there where people\u2019s attitudes about that really shifted. And I would say one of my core beliefs is that Americans do not like being told what to do. Party politics aside, Americans don\u2019t like being told what to do. Something about that flipped and connected to: we have a network of license plate-reading cameras, and we\u2019re going to tear them down when we see them because there\u2019s something about that that offends us as Americans.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Illinois does have privacy laws. I think the last update to the biometric law you did was in 2024, and it has changed again. It\u2019s gotten more vociferously opposed to tracking and surveillance in this country. Do you think you need another update to that privacy law?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n I think we should be looking at that question every year. I\u2019ll give you an example of it. We passed it, and again, I\u2019m back to AI because I think how you\u2019re describing it was a perfect way to say it. If it was an SD card that they had to go grab and then analyze back at the station, it\u2019d be a different thing. But it\u2019s AI that\u2019s operating these things, and that\u2019s allowing this stuff to move instantaneously and track people.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Look, should we be addressing it? Yeah, every year. It\u2019s like the issue of ethics in government. What I mean is, the minute you put an ethics law in place, there\u2019s somebody who\u2019s trying to get around it. I mean, every year, it\u2019s like every law… this is probably true across all of capitalism, maybe. There are always people trying to find a way around the law. Put a tax law in place, and someone\u2019s trying to figure out how to get around it. And I think the point you\u2019re making is that that\u2019s why you need to have a proactive government, less bureaucratically and more aggressively trying to address these things. Are we going to be able to keep up with it? I\u2019ll be honest, I don\u2019t think so. And I also don\u2019t think you can say, \u201cWell, we\u2019re just going to shut it all down\u201d because there are things you\u2019re missing out on.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It\u2019s sort of like, and again, I keep going back to AI, but I think a lot about it. My children are 21 and 24. They\u2019re going to live to 100 or 110 years old because AI is going to solve a whole bunch of medical challenges, and already is. There\u2019s a cure now for sickle cell anemia, and people who would otherwise die at 25 or 30 years old are going to live full lives. This is going to happen across the board in cancer and everything else. And so there\u2019s all good in there, and then there\u2019s the bad. So I know what you\u2019re saying. I guess all I can tell you is I\u2019m a believer that we can progressively \u2014 I don\u2019t mean that in a political fashion \u2014 address these challenges.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In Illinois, we passed a law that disallows the use of AI in therapy for people because we think too much information gets collected, not enough humanity in the process, and we think that it should have humanity in it. Again, we\u2019re not trying to shut it down across the board, but we\u2019re going to have to see how it gets used and where it\u2019s improper.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n And I know that sounds imperfect because the technology is moving so fast that the idea that we\u2019re going to be able to keep up with all the ways in which someone\u2019s privacy could be breached seems very difficult, but I don\u2019t know any other way to do it. That\u2019s why you have a government, and maybe in the end we\u2019re going to have this competing use of things like AI, where AI is monitoring AI, and AI that\u2019s kind of privacy-friendly or focused on privacy is going to be monitoring the AI that\u2019s not. But again, I know you don\u2019t want to just talk about AI.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I am concerned. This issue of privacy has been around for a long time. You\u2019ve been talking about it, I\u2019m sure; I\u2019ve been talking about it since before AI. This is like everybody giving over their personal information in exchange for access to something. And that was happening for a while, and then we\u2019re all getting ads that are personalized to us based on stuff that we\u2019ve essentially given up privacy for.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n No, it\u2019s funny. People believe, and we can write as many stories as we want about how your iPhone is not actually listening to you, but the ad tracking is so good that everyone believes that their iPhones are listening to them. The next turn is that it is now technologically feasible for these systems to listen to you all the time. And I can\u2019t fall back on the idea that it\u2019s cheaper for them to do the ad tracking when you hit I accept than to listen to you all the time, which was, for a decade, the right answer.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n The economically correct answer was that ad tracking was cheaper than listening to you all the time. That might be very different in the future. There are already devices that we cover here at The Verge that purport to listen to you all the time and turn that into some actionable data. And it feels to me like the tech industry is trying to drive a truck through our privacy law, through our lack of AI regulations, through an entire system of governance that is designed for the pre-AI era.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n The notion that you don\u2019t have privacy in public worked really well when everyone didn\u2019t have a cell phone that could connect to the cloud and instantly search every photo all at once, all the time, and do facial recognition. We live in that world now. I would say the public sentiment towards the idea that you don\u2019t have privacy in public places has turned.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n They don\u2019t like the Meta glasses. They call them pervert glasses for a reason. And somewhere in there is, well, the federal government should pass privacy law. It is a failure of imagination in the United States. We don\u2019t have federal privacy law. And then somewhere in there is the notion that the states are laboratories of democracy and policy.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n It is amazing, by the way, how often on this tech and business show, Thomas Hobbes comes up and the very notion that the government is there to serve as an extension of us solving collective action problems. It comes up over and over again because I think the tech industry does not want to respect that dynamic.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n This is why I started with that relationship between government and business, and the pushback and the negotiation, because here it feels like the tech industry is in a bubble of its own making. Truly, in a media bubble of its own making. And then all of the polling is, well, we hate AI. In particular, young people hate AI. And then all of the action is around data centers where NIMBYism, the most American of policy levers, is being pulled to keep these data centers out of communities. And that\u2019s one way to stop AI.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n You just pulled back on data center tax incentives in July. You\u2019re pushing the state legislature to adopt a suite of guarantees on reforms for new construction. Do you think data centers and the pushback on data centers is an effective route towards AI regulation?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n No, I don\u2019t. I think it\u2019s an effective route toward data center regulation. I know that people have conflated and put together their opposition to data centers with their opposition to AI. And a lot of people can\u2019t describe why they\u2019re opposed to one or the other because they\u2019re conflated with one another. But I can say that \u2014 I mean, at least our aim is focused on the idea, and people really feel this, right, and there\u2019s real data to back this up \u2014 the data centers themselves put aside what they\u2019re doing inside a data center.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The data centers and what\u2019s happening are eating up the available electricity, and that\u2019s causing your electric bill to go up. At least that\u2019s how everybody feels. There are a lot of things that we should have been doing in many years gone by to get to a point where electricity bills shouldn\u2019t have to go up now. And that has to do with building out the grid. It\u2019s a world where regulation and cross-border challenges have made it nearly impossible for a lot of the grid to get built the way that it should have. We produce a lot more electricity in the United States than we use, but we just don\u2019t transport it well enough, and we would have a lot more available if we transported it better.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Okay, but even if you think that can\u2019t happen efficiently, we need to build more capacity on the grid. My only point is the opposition to data centers is, in part, a result of the economic situation that\u2019s happening right now in the country, where electric bills, gas, rent, everything has gone up. Your electric bill shows up every month, and it continues to go up, and people kind of scratch their heads and say, \u201cWho am I paying for?\u201d This is happening, and this is particular to Illinois.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n We\u2019re not going to have a whole discussion about energy policy, but I could just say this: We produce more nuclear power in the state of Illinois than any other state. Roughly 53 or 54 percent of our electricity comes from nuclear power, and we\u2019re a net electricity exporter. So we have an excess in Illinois, but our bills are going up, and that\u2019s because of the methodology of the regional transmission organizations. Again, not to get into all the details of it, but essentially, if Ohio decides to build a hyperscale data center, our bills in Illinois are affected, and that\u2019s shocking to people who live in Illinois. But what they know is they don\u2019t want their bill to go up, so they don\u2019t want another data center nearby \u2014 even though the one in Ohio is actually causing the problem, even if you choose to oppose data centers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n So this is a challenge. I think there\u2019s a lot of information that needs to be spread. But most of all, we just need a whole lot more capacity and a whole lot more grid that will, I think, subside some of the concern about data centers. To your point, privacy is, I think, more related to AI than data centers. And it\u2019s not just AI, but the way AI is used. So we\u2019re going to have a lot of opposition. You make an excellent point. I think this feeling of being out of control \u2014 you are not in control of your environment anymore \u2014 that\u2019s the thing that is causing anxiety.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I want to go back to something really important that I was saying earlier. We need better people running for public office. We need smarter policy development in government. And part of that is a generational shift that\u2019s needed and a better understanding. We have people who are serving in the United States Senate who have no idea. Was it the Secretary of Education, Trump\u2019s Secretary of Education, who called it A1<\/a>? I mean, because we\u2019ve got older people who don\u2019t have any exposure who are making policy theoretically on these things, and it should disturb us all. It\u2019s one of the reasons we\u2019ve got to advance the cause of better people and better systems in government.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n We are on the cusp of an election. There might be a new Congress. There might be new leadership in Congress. There are a bunch of old Democrats too. In fact, I could probably point directly to Joe Biden\u2019s age in the last election as the reason that he lost. Do you think that you need a wholesale change of leadership of the older Democrats as well?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n You said, \u201cDo we need a wholesale change?\u201d I mean, I can tell you that I don\u2019t think we should be telling \u2014<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Well, now I live in New York. I\u2019ll just ask you, do you think Chuck Schumer should be the Senate majority leader if the Democrats take the Senate?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n That\u2019s a decision people in the Senate are going to make. I have no influence over it. I can tell you this: I am opposed to term limits because I think that you should have all the choices. You\u2019re a voter. If you want to vote for the 75-year-old, I mean, go ahead.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I\u2019m just suggesting that a great case could be made for the 45-year-old who\u2019s just as smart as the 75-year-old was when he was 45, or maybe is now, but has a modern look at the issues around AI privacy, everything else we\u2019re discussing, and a more aggressive view of how we ought to be reining in big corporations in their invasion of our lives. But I think people ought to make their own choices. I mean, for us to say, \u201cWell, we should have an age limit. You\u2019re 70, that\u2019s it, you\u2019re out.\u201d I think that belies who we are as a democracy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Well, you convinced me. I\u2019m 46. I\u2019m announcing my run for president here with you, Governor. That was a rousing speech.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Listen, I would vote for you in a second if the choice was you and Donald Trump.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n A low bar, but I\u2019m glad I crossed it.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Let me tie two ideas together at the end. We\u2019ve talked a lot about AI regulation. You mentioned social media regulation a little bit earlier in this conversation. I know that Illinois has a social media law. You have a bell-to-bell ban on phones in schools for kids.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n I\u2019m just going to pick on Mark Zuckerberg. It\u2019s easy to pick on Mark Zuckerberg. If you look at how he talks about social media regulation, he basically describes the tragedy of the commons. You signed the landmark settlement with him. I think Illinois is due to get $750 or $760 million out of that settlement. And a big part of it is that TikTok and YouTube have to agree to the same terms, and then Meta will pay the rest of the money. And Zuckerberg very clearly has said that\u2019s because if Instagram falls back on engagement bait and TikTok doesn\u2019t, the kids will just use TikTok. And so the government has to get everyone to agree.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/chorus\/uploads\/chorus_asset\/file\/24792604\/The_Verge_Decoder_Tileart.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=2400\"\/)
<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n