Sen. Adam Schiff on AI regulation, free speech, and impeaching Trump one more time

Sen. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, discussed AI regulation, free speech and social media in an interview on The Verge's Decoder, recorded against the backdrop of President Donald Trump gathering AI CEOs at the White House to sign a nonbinding pact on keeping AI safe.

Schiff called the scene "very distant, very jarring," noting that the same tech leaders publicly say elsewhere that they need regulation and do not want it to be "Trust us, we'll do the right thing." He said none of the companies want to incur the wrath of "this very vengeful president." He described advanced and recursive AI as "a national security concern of the highest order," cited what he called unbridled AI implementation at the Pentagon, called for investigating what role AI may have played in target selection in the bombing of an Iranian girls' school, and said there was an effort to "go after" Anthropic over its positions against domestic mass surveillance and fully autonomous weapons systems.

On intellectual property, Schiff said models have "vacuumed up" IP that represents much of the value of some entertainment companies, and said he and Sen. Curtis are working together to first require companies to retain information about what copyrighted material trained the models before debating fair use. He also cited a Senate hearing on the Patent Office's use of AI to reduce the patent application backlog.

Schiff said he is "very circumspect" about Congress legislating the tech sector because of what he called its poor job regulating social media harms, adding that AI threats are more significant and "it can't wait." He disputed that the First Amendment was the obstacle in social media regulation, arguing companies used it as a "bludgeon" to stop meaningful regulation and that broad Section 230 immunity has not worked as intended; he suggested narrowing rather than eliminating it and said he sees no consensus on what it should look like.

Schiff also supports creating a new agency to regulate AI, and the interview covered the Supreme Court's Loper Bright decision overturning Chevron deference, which he noted could cause new regulation to be immediately tied up in litigation. He also discussed whether he would support impeaching Trump again.