Adam Schiff: Congress vs. AI, Caught Between Section 230 and Murphy's Law

A Voluntary Pact That Convinces No One

The interview opens with the signing, at the White House, of a non-binding commitment by AI leaders. Nilay Patel quotes a line: companies will "empower an internal team" to verify their controls work. For Schiff, that's "really meaningless."

He points out the disconnect between these CEOs signing in the president's presence while elsewhere calling for real regulation. In his view, no company wants to draw the ire of a "vindictive" president.

He lists the national security risks going unaddressed: models that self-improve and become opaque, the Pentagon's use of AI, the need to investigate its possible role in target selection during the bombing of a girls' school in Iran, and the administration's attempt to "kill" Anthropic.

Intellectual Property: Know What Was Scraped First

As ranking member of the IP subcommittee, Schiff describes labs that "hoovered up" everything, figuring legality would come later. Lawsuits keep piling up—some settle, others don't.

The difficulty, he explains, is that the industry isn't monolithic: for Amazon, its film catalog matters less than its technology. With Senator Curtis, he's working to require retention and disclosure of copyrighted works used in training.

He also cites a positive use case: the patent office leveraging AI to clear its backlog.

Section 230 and Liability: The Great Gray Zone

Patel argues the First Amendment paralyzed social media regulation. Schiff disagrees: it was Section 230's blanket immunity that let platforms dodge consequences, with the First Amendment mostly serving as a rhetorical "club."

Both agree on one point: when Meta itself generates content, or when ChatGPT answers, that's the company's own speech, outside Section 230's shield. Schiff flags the gray areas in between, like algorithmic amplification.

On agents, he returns to the weapons metaphor: does a tool built for hacking, sold without due diligence, make its maker liable? Patel counters that models like Mythos serve both offense and defense, and that this legal fog is freezing deployments.

An Agency for AI, Despite the Supreme Court

Schiff sums up the problem in one line: tech follows Moore's Law, the legislative calendar follows Murphy's Law. Hence his support for a regulator with expertise and discretion—"an FDA for AI" or equivalent—while acknowledging the challenge of competing with private-sector salaries.

Patel brings up the 2024 Loper Bright ruling, which ended courts' deference to agency experts. Schiff describes a Court whose "common denominator is money" and concludes that lawmakers will need to write laws as specific as possible, knowing every ambiguity will be exploited.

Data Centers, Antitrust, Privacy: Shifting Lines

Backlash against data centers, illustrated by the controversy around Kevin O'Leary in Utah, unites populists on both left and right. Schiff has introduced a bill requiring data centers to bear their own costs to spare consumers—a mostly Democratic effort so far.

On antitrust, he backs a limited exemption to counter foreign distillation, modeled on the cyber information-sharing law he helped pass a decade ago. He draws the line, however, at any price-fixing "cabal."

He calls Flock cameras "really concerning," citing their use to track a woman seeking reproductive care. For him, the central question becomes: can privacy survive powerful AI?

After the Midterms: Oversight, Corruption, Hollywood

If Democrats retake Congress, Schiff promises hearings grilling AI executives on the times "their own agents got away from them," plus bipartisan legislation hard to veto. On a potential third impeachment push, he sidesteps the question.

He wants oversight focused on corruption that drives up the cost of living, pointing to whether Amazon secures federal contracts after paying $40 million to the presidential family via the Melania documentary.

On the Paramount-Warner merger and AI in film, he keeps returning to the same question: commitment to workers. He cites the German model of worker representation on corporate boards and calls for progressive taxation again, AI included.