AI Will Drop the Work Week to 35 Hours | Sen. Bernie Moreno

Bernie Moreno (0:00)

I'm a big believer they need good actors creating great products that are careful themselves. Like, for example, if Anthropic is concerned about their models, they need to take action now. Why are they waiting for Congress Act?

They know where the pitfalls are, they know what needs to be done. Take those actions today, not tomorrow, like literally today.

SPEAKER_2 (0:21)

We're back with Senator Bernie Moreno, who is the US Senator from Ohio. Senator, welcome to MTS.

Bernie Moreno (0:27)

Oh, thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_3 (0:28)

Yeah, first senatorial presence on MTS.

SPEAKER_2 (0:31)

So where should we start? I'm curious about how you and your office use AI day to day, if at all.

Bernie Moreno (0:37)

Oh, I use it a lot.

So we actually named AI, we call him Albert. So Albert is a staffer in the office. He works long hours, doesn't require a lot of pay. But it's great for research, things that would normally take somebody a long period of time to kind of vet and research the information.

AI helps a lot to make that happen. So we use it quite a bit. I personally would like to be using it a lot more, but unfortunately the Senate has some crazy rules about how we're allowed to deploy it, how we're not allowed to deploy it. What you'll find, I find it crazy, is that some offices ban the use of AI.

SPEAKER_2 (1:18)

That is crazy.

Bernie Moreno (1:19)

It's going to be insane.

SPEAKER_3 (1:20)

What's the nature of those offices? What are the offices where it's more lenient versus?

Bernie Moreno (1:25)

Well, we're trying to dive in as far as humanly possible. I think it's a great opportunity where you could use it, for example, to respond to some basic, consistent, constituent letters in a more customizable fashion, where if it's not an issue that's been dealt with in the past, it can prompt a human to find new information. Once you put that in, of course, the learning model gets better.

But right now, the Senate prohibits us from integrating outside systems into the Senate system. I think it's a good technical problem between isolation. But I'm hoping that soon, in fact, I'd like to get that done next year.

SPEAKER_2 (1:58)

So a lot of people in San Francisco, in the tech world, are very interested in this idea of AGI, artificial general intelligence. Many people in this world believe that this is coming quite soon, or we'll have AI models that are as capable or more capable than humans in a general fashion across all kinds of cognitive tasks and economically valuable areas. So we call that being AGI-pilled. Have you heard this term?

Bernie Moreno (2:19)

Yes.

SPEAKER_2 (2:20)

How AGI-pilled would you say you are?

Bernie Moreno (2:23)

Well, look, at the end of the day, you can either be left behind by technology or embrace it and understand it and not be left behind. Realize that the greatest promise in my mind of AI generally is that it can make us dramatically more productive. Like when I was your age, if I didn't work 80, 90, 100 hours a week, somehow it's considered a degenerate and lazy.

Somebody your age doesn't want to work 80, 90, 100 hours a week, nor do you need to. You, with the promise of where AI can take us, you can work 30, 35 hours a week, be as productive as somebody back then working 100 And what that allows you to do is be a better father, a better husband, a better wife, better mom, somebody who pays more attention to local communities and be more engaged. Those are the things that I think are hugely positive for civilization.

SPEAKER_3 (3:14)

Yeah. How do you see communicating this message to different groups of people? Like there's a lot of, obviously, there's people who are skeptical about the promise of AI or skeptical about what it brings them. So how do you think about this?

Bernie Moreno (3:27)

Well, I think the builders of this technology that think it's going to kill us all should stop creating and shut their companies down. Because you wouldn't tolerate that with any business. Like the person who built this building said that, if I build it, most likely the building is going to collapse and kill people. You could say, well, then don't build your building. So I just don't understand that point of view. I think it's a little bit of a red herring that they want to be the one sole completely regulated AI engine that's basically a branch of the government, something very Orwellian, akin to what would happen in China. But look, I think the second... I've been around a lot of tech transfer. I mean, that's one of the benefits of being Gen X, by the way, is that we were around before computers. We were around before the internet, yet I've embraced it in a meaningful way. It's the same thing.