Last night on HBO Real Time with Bill MaherThe impending TikTok ban was on the table for discussion, but the host doesn’t think it’s what Congress should be concerned about.
The US House of Representatives this week passed a bill that would ban the app if Chinese parent company ByteDance does not sell its majority stake within six months. It is unclear whether the Senate will pass the bill at this time.
Maher joked: “China, you know what? You can make everything we use, but keeping our kids stupid is our job.”
Speaking to his panel guests, who included Republican Rep. Nancy Mace and Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna, Maher expressed his belief that the country has much bigger digital problems to worry about than TikTok.
“Explain to me why people who oppose the bill and it being signed, you know, say, ‘No, we can keep TikTok Chinese.’ What is the common ground there? -Maher asked.
“The common ground is the First Amendment on free speech,” Khanna responded. “I mean, it shows how out of touch Congress is that, of all the issues in the country, what we can do in three days is ban TikTok. That’s the problem?
Khanna suggests that Congress should consider enacting a “data privacy law.”
Although Maher acknowledged that he is also a “free speech person,” he went on to say that artificial intelligence is a much more serious threat and is what Congress should really focus on.
“I’m much more concerned about AI,” Maher said. “I mean, I heard you [Khanna] Say this week that you believe this country’s first billionaire will be an artificial intelligence entrepreneur. To me, that’s scarier than all of this, the idea of a billionaire and it also coming from AI. And, by the way, the US State Department said this week that, in the worst case, [AI] represents an extinction-level threat to the human species.”
Maher continued: “You know, we see all these failures and it doesn’t stop us at all. It’s like an arms race and we are the guinea pigs. And shouldn’t the technicians have been forced to fix the bugs before they unleashed them on humanity? A bit?”
One of the main reasons behind last year’s writers and actors strikes was the need for new rules around the use of artificial intelligence in entertainment.
