CNN One Thing

This is one thing, I'm David Rhind, and artificial intelligence the great uniter? Well, when it comes to opposing President Donald Trump, it might be.

So you've got politicians like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis agreeing with Democratic senators like Elizabeth Warren.

Stick with us.

So a new study shows just how far AI has seeped into our lives nearly a

There was a big study out a few days ago that really caught my attention. It was from Pew Research Center, and for the first time, they were looking at how often teenagers use AI chatbots like ChatGPT or Meta AI. The findings were wild. Nearly 65% of American teens have used the chatbot at least once. Nearly a third use it every single day. And that includes 16% who said they use it several times a day or almost constantly. Almost constantly. Think about that. Especially when you consider all the negative headlines we've heard this year about some of these chatbots like character AI.

'The company has faced a number of lawsuits from parents who claim that their teens were driven to self-harm or suicide because they build relationships with these chatbots. Character AI has now made a number of changes to its platforms, but I think all of this does continue to point to the need for parents to be paying really close attention.

Parents and activists want these tech companies to do better. They also want the government to step in as well, to write laws that would prevent this kind of harm. But will they be allowed to? Do you use AI? I do. For what?

For all kinds of things.

Heidi Balderree is a Republican state senator from Utah. She wasn't thrilled to hear about the executive order President Trump signed on Thursday.

We have a big signing right now and we have a tremendous industry where we're leading by a lot. It's the AI, artificial intelligence. I always thought it's

We're gonna dig deeper into this in a bit, but basically this order would block states from enforcing their own rules about AI as the Trump administration pursues a single national framework.

In the meantime, this EO gives your administration tools to push back on the most onerous and excessive state regulations.

White House AI and crypto czar David Sachs made a point to say they won't push back on child safety regulations, but they could challenge other laws they deem onerous that they argue could hamstring big tech companies trying to beat China.

This will not be successful unless they have one source of approval or disapproval, frankly. You could have disapproval too, but it's gotta be one source. They can't go to fifty different sources.

I'm a little bit befuddled by the thought of an executive order in in light of all the opposition that it seems to be bipartisan.

Do you have a theory as to why still pursuing it?

I know why I'm not sure why the executive order. I can absolutely understand why the tech companies are pushing back.

Utah was one of the first states to pass a consumer protection law around generative AI. It passed regulations on mental health chatbots, deep fakes, disclosure requirements when AI is involved with consequential decisions. Senator Baldery says her constituents are largely on board with those rules, so she's not afraid to speak out, even if that puts her on the other side of President Trump.

He's one person and and I'm another. And so I look at everything individually. And, you know, in general, I tend as a principle to favor deregulation. But, you know, this absolute ban is is ludicrous. You know, we've already seen, like, you know, we had the four bills in 2025, we had several in 2024. We actually set up a, you know, an entire framework in Utah. If you're talking about intellectual property rights, you can see something similar to Tennessee's Elvis Act. We've cracked down on CSAM or child sex abuse material. Those aren't overreaches, these are targeted, specific, reasonable and necessary regulations. And Tenth Amendment under our constitution, you know, it says that powers not delegated to the federal government are reserved to the states. And federalism exists for a reason because states are better positioned to understand and respond to the needs of their people. We need the federal government to respect what states are already doing and let the states experiment, let our innovation flourish through experimentation with guardrails instead of roadblocks.

So, what is this fight over AI regulation really about? And how could it impact midterm races across the country? I wanted to turn to CNN's resident expert on all things artificial intelligence, Hadas Gold. We spoke on Thursday just before Trump signed this executive order. Okay, Hadas, you were recently named CNN's first ever AI correspondent. I'd say congrats, but I want to confirm first that you are indeed human. AI correspondent just means you cover AI, right?

I am a human who is covering AI. I can understand why people will be confused and thinking I may be an AI journalist, but at CNN we value real human journalists.

Well, I wanted to talk to you because President Trump came out the other day and announced he was going to be signing an executive order about AI and the folks who cover this stuff really closely, like you, said this was a really big deal. So can you tell us why?

Yeah, any sort of federal action that would in any way regulate or not regulate AI is a big deal right now because of AI is literally one of the engines running our economy right now. And the whole point of this is to prevent states from enacting their own rules and regulations around AI because critics, especially those in the AI industry and some in the White House, say you cannot have a patchwork of all these different state laws. Some states have passed some of these laws in the past. And those in the AI world, not all of them, but some of them say that this stifles innovation, makes it hard to do work. And you know, you can kind of imagine why that would be the case with something like AI, which is borderless, to have to deal with different states and their different rules.

So like they want to launch a new product or something, but one state has one set of rules about it, another state has another, and they just want kind of a blanket thing so it's easier.

'Exactly. But there is sort of a question of what is that blanket thing. There is a vacuum of federal regulation. So we might have this executive order, which would direct the US Attorney General to sue states to overturn some of these laws. There's also talk that in this executive order there could be calls for to withhold other funding for other things like broadband. If these states enact these AI laws, this will likely face a lot of legal challenges from the states as well. But I've been in San Francisco this week talking to tons of folks in the industry and everyone, even the people who are like pro-state laws, anti-state laws, everybody just wants something. They all agree that there needs to be some sort of regulations in place, but it's not clear that Congress like knows what it's doing and can put that into place. And there's also talk that, you know, maybe it's not a good idea to have a giant, huge federal regulation framework over this because AI is everywhere. AI is going to be touching your healthcare and your car and you know, your computer, and you know, Disney just now announced a partnership with OpenAI. It's going to be everywhere. So maybe the smarter way to do it is to get really focused and do very specific things like focus on data privacy. You know, we don't have federal regulations over data privacy at sort of that high level. Maybe that's the way forward, but this is going to be a huge fight in Washington and here in San Francisco, especially in the coming year ahead of the midterms.

Yeah, I mean, w what are the concerns here about a lack of regulation in any way, like no matter where it's coming from? 'Cause it seems like the policymakers are trying to address this as the tech is still growing, as the plane is being built, right?

Oh yeah, and the plane is being built way faster than you can imagine. You get a lot of analogies to things like the seatbelt in the car. You know, that the car was invented first, and then the seatbelt was invented way after, after a lot of people died in terrible accidents. And then the seatbelt, and there was resistance to the seatbelt. And so there's that's sort of the similar cadence that you get with any new technology and regulation. The thing with the AI is that it is developing so, so fast that sometimes it's hard to imagine that, you know, it was only in 2022 that ChatGPT first rolled out. And if we were to use ch 2022 ChatGPT today, I think it would be like, whoa, that what is this sort of like older, clunkier thing compared to everything that AI can do today?

Well so when we talk about this idea of President Trump saying to states, No, you cannot make regulations about AI on your own. This is coming from the federal government, are there any states in particular that are kind of pushing back at this idea and like, hey, we're going forward on this?

This is one of those rare issues where you really have bipartisan, like kind of surprising people who are agreeing with one another. So you've got politicians like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis agreeing with Democratic senators like Elizabeth Warren. And a lot of the states are sort of plowing ahead. It's been really interesting to see Florida in particular and Ron DeSantis saying that they are going to continue with their proposals.

But but we're gonna be proposing and we're gonna work with the legislature to establish an artificial intelligence bill of rights for individual Floridians in our state.

In Florida's proposal is actually pretty interesting because it has a lot of different elements in it and different protections.

We're gonna is ensure parents can access conversations their child has with one of these LLM chatbots. Parent will be able to set parameters for when the child can access any of these platforms.

Everything from parents' access to their kids' chatbot conversations to also ensuring that a human will review insurance claims and that lawyers would have to certify that a real human or an AI looked at a legal brief.

We will prohibit all utilities from charging Florida residents more, whether that's water, electric, gas, you name it, in order to help support a hyper scale data center.

So there's a lot in there, and that's I you are going to see, I think, legal challenges from the states when it comes to this executive order on AI and all of the potential consequences.

What we were are proposing will be the most significant protections for individuals anywhere in the country by far. And you know, when they said the state shouldn't be able to get involved in this, they said, Well, California's gonna impose woke standards, California's gonna do this kind of and I don't know if they're doing it. I don't we're not doing any of that. What we're doing is things that are gonna make sure that we put Floridians first.

Gotta take a quick break. When we come back, Hadas and I are going to talk about how this fight over AI could seep into your local midterm race. Stick around. I mean, and you talk about, you know, the kind of strange bedfellows this has created. It it seems to have created some kind of schism within the MAGA movement itself. You you see people like Steve Bannon really speaking out against, you know, AI amnesty, as they call it, and kind of voicing some resentment with how these extremely rich Silicon Valley types like Sam Altman or David Sachs have become so close with the Trump White House. Is that going to become a a talking point, you know, for Republicans going forward to the midterms? And then, you know, as as Trump kind of exits the stage?

Yeah, a hundred percent. I think that this schism in MAGA is fascinating to see. And I do think that you're going to see it continue. Because if you remember, there had been this push for this ten year moratorium on state rules that were supposed to be in previous mega bills. There was the

Right. This was in the so called big beautiful bill and a lot of people got pissed about it.

'And that it would have withheld federal funding for states to expand internet access if they had AI regulations, but it failed. And some people say it failed because Bannon and some of his kind of co-you know colleagues flooded congressional offices with complaints and phone calls from everyday people saying that they didn't want this. I think it's going to be fascinating to see how the politics of all this plays out, especially we know President Trump is very aware of public polling and he cares a lot about what the base thinks. And I think if their voices get louder and louder and louder and louder, then we could see that affecting some of this regulation. Maybe that means that they will speed up the process of getting some sort of federal framework into place that sort of maybe satisfies some of the desire from a lot of people. Because while the public, when you look at the polling, is really excited about AI, the level of fear is kind of matching up with that excitement.

So you have fear on the one side maybe from the public, but I think critics would say that might be outmatched by the money that big tech can kind of throw at this to lobby some of the people in power to kinda influence some of the things we're hearing President Trump talk about.

'Yeah, so there have been new super packs that have popped up that are backed with hundreds of millions of dollars from the AI industry. Some of them call themselves pro AI, when really what they are is they are anti-AI regulations. And then there's other packs being brought up that are sort of the more pro regulation. There's so much maneuvering and it's insane to think about the amount of money.

Conservative Chris Gober knows what it takes to win a fight.

I reported the first candidate ads that are coming out now from one of these super packs.

Crushing the cartels to keep dangerous drugs off our streets, and promoting American technology investment right here in Texas so we can defeat China.

One for candidate in Texas, one against a candidate in New York.

Alex Boris is running for Congress, but he wants Albany bureaucrats regulating AI.

That's all backed by this, you know, AI money. And I think that will shape the midterm elections. I don't know whether the voters will be thinking about AI, you know, first line of their priorities when they're going into the ballot box, but for the companies, they're going to be spending a lot of money on this election.

And it'll be there behind the scenes, whether, you know, the voters are explicitly aware of it or not. But beyond the politics though, at least when you talk about what, you know, states like Florida are proposing, they seem like pretty common sense, reasonable rules. I I would want to know that a human at least touches some part of my insurance claim, you know, at some point in the process, and that's not just a faceless bot. So I I'm sure many parents are relieved to know lawmakers somewhere, even if it is at the state level and not Congress are seriously grappling with all this. Like, are experts on board with what some of these states are putting forward?

Just like in every industry, there's a variety of opinions, but everybody that I've talked to in the industry here in San Francisco this week, they all agree you need something. You can't just let this go on unfettered. But one big fear that they have is not only technical feasibility and you know, Congress passing something that is just so technically onerous that it's really difficult for them to adhere to it and it stifles their innovation. But they are looking at China. And there is a fear that China will beat the US and will reach, you know, the superintelligence, the AGI before the United States, if the US companies get hampered by these regulations. But, you know, then there's also the safety concerns at the same time. So finding that balance is something that a lot of people really care about here. They do want something, but I don't know if anybody has the answer, even you know, all the experts here in AI have the answer on exactly what's the best way to go about regulating it.

We're all along for the ride, whether we like it or not, I guess. Das, thank you. Appreciate it. On Thursday, Time magazine named the Architects of AI as its person of the year. It said this was the year AI's full potential roared into view, and when it became clear that there will be no turning back or opting out. But on the very same day, AI stocks plummeted after Oracle posted a worse than expected outlook, exacerbating fears that the AI spending boom will soon come back down to Earth. That's all for us today. We're back on Wednesday. In the meantime, make sure you're following the show so a new episode pops in your feed right away. And if you like the show, just tell a friend, tell a family member, tell someone you see on the street. Any word of mouth helps. We'll talk to you later.