Latest news with #Fiefia
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
How Trump's ‘big beautiful bill' could wreck Utah's groundbreaking AI laws
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said President Donald Trump's 'big, beautiful' budget package could derail the state's groundbreaking artificial intelligence laws unless it is changed. The 1,000-page bill that passed the House last month includes a 10-year prohibition on AI regulations. An updated Senate version removed the all-out ban but conditioned $500 million in AI infrastructure grants on states pausing enforcement of AI laws. Behind these provisions is a desire by some lawmakers to prevent a nationwide patchwork of AI regulations that hampers innovation amid competition with China. But Cox, and Utah's top tech policymakers, said the approach taken by Trump's bill interferes with the state's right to react to rapidly evolving technologies. 'Our hope is that the last version of this bill that passes, whatever that looks like, will allow for the smart type of regulation that we're doing in Utah, and prevent the bad kind of regulation that would stop AI from reaching its fullest potential,' Cox said Tuesday during a monthly PBS broadcast. Utah has been recognized around the world for having the 'first and smartest of the AI regulations that have been proposed,' according to Cox. These policies include bills that create a state-run AI policy lab, clarify consumer protection liability for AI and require AI disclosures in industries like finance and mental health. The governor said that multiple members of the U.S. House have told his team that they were not aware of the AI moratorium when they voted on the bill. Members of the White House and Senate have also said that they don't want the 'BBB bill' to eliminate Utah's law, Cox said. 'AI companies actually support what we're doing because they recognize that this is the right way to do AI regulation as opposed to just piecemeal,' Cox said. Cox agreed that 'a hodgepodge' of AI laws around the country would cause the U.S. to 'fall behind and we would lose this global race that is happening right now.' But he said a moratorium on AI policy shouldn't come at the expense of Utah's novel approach which doesn't actually tell AI companies how they can develop their models. Utah Rep. Doug Fiefia, R-Herriman, said the problem goes beyond counterproductive policy. It targets the foundation of states rights that has allowed Utah to lead out on so many issues, according to Fiefia, a freshman lawmaker who previously worked at Google. 'States are laboratories for innovation when it comes to policy, and I believe that the federal government should not overreach on this process and allow it to work,' Fiefia said. 'We will not give over our control because the federal government believes that it's the right thing to do to win this race.' On Tuesday, Utah House legislative leadership, and 62 state senators and representatives, sent a letter authored by Fiefia to Utah's congressional delegation arguing that the moratorium hindered 'Utah's nationally recognized efforts to strike the right balance between innovation and consumer protection.' Not only would the moratorium harm state efforts to legislate guardrails, it would also hurt businesses that are using AI responsibly by allowing their competitors to engage in unethical behavior, according to Fiefia. States have shown they are more nimble than the federal government when they need to adapt to change, Fiefia said. And this is the approach Fiefia believes Utah has demonstrated in opening up legal pathways for innovation while updating the law for the threats posed by AI. 'Just because we want to move fast in this global arms race of AI doesn't mean we can't do so with a seat belt,' Fiefia said. 'I believe that we can both win this AI race, but also doing it in a thoughtful and meaningful way.' The AI moratorium faces procedural hurdles in addition to ideological pushback. Utah Sen. Kirk Cullimore, R-Sandy, pointed out that reconciliation bills are meant only to amend the annual budget and not make substantive policy shifts. Some senators have alleged that the AI moratorium does not comply with the 'Byrd Rule,' a procedural requirement that prohibits 'nonbudgetary' additions during the budget 'reconciliation' process. Cullimore, who was the sponsor behind most of Utah's AI legislation, was in Washington, D.C., last week, speaking with members of the House Commerce Committee, which oversaw the inclusion of the AI moratorium provisions. The intentions behind the moratorium, Cullimore said, were to prevent states from implementing what are called 'foundational regulations' that restrict the kind of technology AI companies can develop. Utah's laws do not do this, according to Cullimore, who also signed Fiefia's letter, but they would still be sidelined by the 'big beautiful bill' even if the moratorium is replaced by the conditioned federal funding. 'I think the drafting of the moratorium was so broad that it potentially encompassed all of that stuff,' he said. 'So I hope that that we can refine the text a little bit, and then if they want to put those conditions in on foundational regulation, I think that'd be appropriate.'
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
He once worked for Big Tech. Now this Utah lawmaker is leading efforts to regulate it
When asked about the biggest win Utah lawmakers achieved during the recent legislative session, Gov. Spencer Cox offered a surprising answer. His pick, HB418, wasn't surprising because it protects online user data — Cox has been one of the strongest proponents of reining in Big Tech — nor was it surprising that the governor picked a bill that passed with near-unanimous support from lawmakers in both parties. What was surprising was that the bill was the brainchild of a first-time lawmaker, who didn't miss a beat in shepherding it through the Utah Legislature in his first weeks in elected office. But the issue is something Rep. Doug Fiefia has been thinking about for years, going back to his time working for Big Tech companies like Google. It's no secret that Google collects a vast amount of data on millions of Americans, but when Fiefia began working in technology sales for the company he said he — along with many others in the company — viewed that data as a way for Google to improve its products by 'connecting the products or the companies to the people that were searching for them.' That view eventually gave way to an uneasiness about just how much information the company has and how it uses it, eventually leading to his departure, Fiefia said. 'The more and more I dove into it, the more and more I realized is this company, they're trying to make a bottom line. And the reality is that the features that they were building ... they are exploiting you and I,' the Herriman Republican told in an interview in the House lounge Tuesday. 'I think I realized very quickly that users — us, you and I — as regular citizens, were never the customer. We were always the product that was being sold and we were being served up on a silver platter.' Fiefia's answer was HB418, a first-of-its-kind bill that gives Utahns the right to control the data that is collected from them by social media companies. The bill requires that users be able to delete their data from a platform or download and transfer it to another platform. It also directs social media companies to enable communication across different platforms, akin to how email users can communicate with others regardless of provider. Cox called it 'as big a piece of legislation as I have ever seen a freshman (lawmaker) run' during a ceremonial signing of the bill in April, during which Fiefia said he hopes the law will 'shift power back to where it always should have remained — with the people.' 'They were trading our free will for profit margin and that's why I wanted to run this type of bill — to give people back the control of their data to own, manage and control it,' he said Tuesday. 'And I think this is the first step. I think there are probably more steps to come after this.' Google did not respond to a request for comment. In the case of HB418, Fiefia's youth was a key factor in building support for the bill, as he was able to explain the technicalities of online data collection in a way that made sense to older or less tech-savvy colleagues. He compared modern data ownership to regulations enabled by the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which allow users to keep their phone numbers if switching providers. Put that way, Fiefia said, skepticism from colleagues warmed up to the idea, telling him: 'I don't understand all the technical pieces of this, but if that's the principle, I agree.' Fiefia looks like a conservative Republican on most issues — his campaign website declares him anti-abortion, pro-business and pro-gun — but his thinking on tech regulation mirrors a change within the conservative movement that has been led in part by Utah. The state was the first in the nation to enact broad social media regulations — though their future is still being worked out in the courts — and has joined with a coalition of states in suing major companies that own Facebook and TikTok. Fiefia still views himself as pro-business, but argues that social media companies have built their brands off of content created by users. Rather than view his data privacy bill as stifling business, he sees it as promoting individual ownership of intellectual property. 'We would never allow any other industry to do what we've allowed Big Tech to do,' he said. 'You're right, I believe in the free market, but when it comes to our identify, our digital footprint and their control of it and their manipulation of it, that's where I think conservatives came to the table and said: 'You know what, we don't like regulating, we believe in a free market, but this is just wrong. They've crossed the line.'' 'This is actually my property,' Fiefia added. 'I created this. I wrote that. I posted this. That is mine and what we've allowed them to do for so long is to claim it, to use it and to abuse it.' While governments are still scrambling to catch up with the disruption social media platforms have caused, the next powerful technology, artificial intelligence, is emerging. The 'reactive' approach to social media has contributed to poor mental health outcomes for children, Fiefia said, and the lawmaker is hopeful government will be more proactive this time around. 'I fear that if we do the same thing, if we take the same approach with AI, too many people will get hurt,' he said. 'The advancement of AI and the technology is so robust and so advanced that if we take a reactive approach, I fear that it's just going to be too late.' But Fiefia worries that Congress is already taking steps to make it harder for states to adopt artificial intelligence protections. Tucked into President Donald Trump's 'one, big, beautiful bill' — which passed the House Thursday — is a provision enacting a 10-year moratorium on state regulations of artificial intelligence. 'We believe that excessive regulation of the AI sector could kill a transformative industry just as it's taking off,' Vice President J.D. Vance said in February, per CNN, articulating the administration's position. Fiefia disagrees, arguing that states are nimbler and better able to adapt to rapid technological advances compared to an infamously unproductive Congress. He anticipates Big Tech and privacy issues are 'going to be my fight in the Legislature ... for the rest of my time here,' so AI will be on his mind regardless of what Congress does. That's not to say Fiefia is opposed to the advancing technology — it's just the opposite. He seems tremendous potential across the board, particularly in health care, where he is optimistic artificial intelligence will lead to medical breakthroughs and cures for disease that humans have been unable to master. He just doesn't want to make the same mistake many did with social media by overlooking the potential harms. 'We've got to find a balance, to figure out how do we protect users and make sure that we continue to support innovation?' he said. 'That's what I'm always thinking about. I don't ever want to over-regulate, but I also want to see if we allow this technology to run, what does it look like if it's used by the wrong hands?'
Yahoo
04-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Gov. Cox signs three bills impacting child safety online
In the Utah Capitol's Gold Room on Friday morning, Gov. Spencer Cox ceremoniously signed three bills regarding tech safety. He was joined by the bills' sponsors and individuals and groups who helped push the legislation forward. Before inviting the bill sponsors to speak about their legislation, Cox talked more generally about what these new laws aim to achieve. He described their larger purpose as returning power back to parents and ensuring safety for children online. 'I truly believe it's our free will that's being taken away from us,' Cox said. 'And we know it's going to get worse with the advent of AI. These social graphs will know more about us than we know about ourselves.' Cox continued, 'It's tearing us apart, the fabric of our country, it's making us hate each other.' SB142: App Store Accountability Act — requires app developers to verify a user's age category and confirm that the user's parent gave yearly parental consent to the app store. It also allows parents of harmed minors to sue developers or the app store if they violate these provisions. HB418: Data Sharing Amendments — gives users the right to own, control and manage their data, ensuring that they can permanently delete their own information. SB178: Devices in Public Schools — this bill prohibits students from using their cellphones, smartwatches and other nonschool provided technology during classroom hours. The sponsor of the data sharing amendments bill, Rep. Doug Fiefia, R-Herriman, stated his legislation is 'a turning point' for Utahns. 'It's where we shift power back to where it should have always remained,' Fiefia said. Invited to stand behind the governor with Fiefia and other bill helpers was Frank McCourt, the founder of Project Liberty. His nonprofit aided Fiefia in pushing the legislation and has grown since its establishment in 2021 to shift power from large tech companies to users. The project consists of 'technologists, academics, policymakers and citizens committed to building a better internet — where the data is ours to manage, the platforms are ours to govern, and the power is ours to reclaim," per Project Liberty's site. Before signing, Cox thanked Fiefia for his bill, adding that it is 'the first of its kind in the country.″ Sen. Todd Weiler, R-Woods Cross, spoke next on his App Store Accountability Act. He began by describing the battle to get his legislation through the House and Senate. 'Everyone in this room knows, and every first year law school student knows, that kids can't enter contracts,' Weiler said. But the way app stores have worked for decades goes against this. Weiler explained, 'Every time someone downloads an app or an app changes, and it pops up and says do you accept these terms and conditions, we're allowing our 11-year-olds, our 13-year-olds and our 15-year-olds to enter into binding contracts.' Many of these contracts, Weiler said, are asking for permission to collect the child's data, sometimes to access their microphone and camera. Weiler compared privacy levels to when he was a child, and stated, 'Now we have app developers accessing our kids in the middle of the night in their bedrooms ... and this bill says, 'this is not OK.'' Sen. Lincoln Fillmore, R-South Jordan, and Rep. Douglas Welton, R-Payson, spoke lastly on their bill banning cellphone from classrooms. Fillmore began by saying, Welton, who works as a school teacher in Payson, was initially opposed to the bill when it was first proposed in 2023. 'Just watching how it effects kids in classrooms changed his mind.' The most dangerous thing cellphones do in classrooms is distract kids from their education, Fillmore said. Welton also took a moment to speak. 'We spend millions of dollars on mental health, counselors, a lot of things like that, and it costs a lot of money, and it seems like one of the basic thing we could do to cut down on that expense and increase mental health for our students is to eliminate cellphones in schools,' he said. While signing, Cox said he hopes the next step taken with this bill is to increase it from just a ban during class time to a ban from the start to the end of the school day.
Yahoo
28-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
A Utah representative's bold move to rein in Big Tech
When you join a social media platform, you sign over the rights to your digital identity. Every post, view and interaction is logged — much like client records stored in a filing cabinet, where they remain indefinitely. When deleting an app you don't get to take your data with you, and though the app may no longer be on your phone, the data isn't erased. In fact, the app continues to use and profit from it. But a bipartisan bill in Utah aims to change that. HB418′s purpose is to allow users the right to own, control and manage their data. In a way, it intends to 'clean up the mess that we caused by allowing tech companies to come in and control our lives,' the bill's sponsor, Rep. Doug Fiefia, R-Herriman, said. More than 35 years ago, President Ronald Reagan said, 'The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government, and I'm here to help.' Fiefia added that Americans need to be wary of another power. Big Tech. 'The most dangerous nine words in modern history is 'we are Big Tech, and we're here to help,'' Fiefia told the Deseret News. For years, Utah has been a leader in using its legislative power to protect consumers, especially minors, from the impacts of technology, specifically social media. Fiefia's bill has garnered national attention from prominent figures such as social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, author of 'The Anxious Generation'; Paul Allen, co-founder of and Frank McCourt, founder of Project Liberty. Its potential ripple effects on the country and its relationship with the tech industry have made it a focal point of national discussion. The bill, titled Data Sharing Amendments, passed the House on Day 31 of the 2025 legislative session with a 64-1 vote. Big Tech is a common nickname for the five most prominent and influential technology companies in the world: Google, Apple, Meta (formerly Facebook), Amazon and Microsoft. Most of these companies have more users than countries' populations, and they dominate the economic and social power of online communication. According to the Transnational Institute, Big Tech is the 'most profitable and valuable' industry globally, making billions in profits annually. Over time, these companies have monopolized the internet and shaped the market in their favor. 'We're completely locked into these social networks that have erected all these barriers,' Allen told the Deseret News, making it nearly impossible to compete with. 'They own us. They own our data, and we can't do anything with our social graph,' adding that HB418, if passed, would 'not just level the playing field, but give small startups a fighting chance to make a dent in this world with multitrillion-dollar corporations that have sucked up all the oxygen.' A tech pioneer himself, Allen founded in 1997, the largest for-profit genealogy company in the world. He was there when Mark Zuckerberg held his very first F8 developer conference back in 2007. 'Zuckerberg stood in front of an audience of a couple of hundred people and said, 'Any third-party software developer can now build apps on top of the Facebook platform. We will let you compete with us. We just want to own the social graph, and we want third-party app developers to launch this huge app ecosystem. We'll give you 100% of the revenue from the apps that you develop,'' he said. He shook Zuckerberg's hand, said he would launch his family apps on Facebook and went to work. Instead of going the traditional route and creating a website, Allen's team launched an app called 'We're Related' on Facebook. 'Within 29 days, we had a million users,' he said. 'Then it started adding a million a week.' Nearly three years later, Facebook removed tens of thousands of apps from its platform, denying Allen's app access to its 120 million users. As a result, he said, they lost $750,000 in monthly revenue and were forced to lay off 40 employees. 'We were the biggest family app on top of Facebook, and Facebook shut us out and kicked all the apps off of their platform,' he said. Because they were giving apps 100% of the ad revenue, Facebook management 'must have come in and said, 'Why are you giving away 30% of your ad revenue? Why aren't you taking 100% of the ad revenue?'' 'So I'm not a fan of a corporation that launches a platform, makes promises to almost 100,000 app developers, and then decides to change the rules and kicks them all off so that they can keep 100% of the ad revenue.' Before his political career, Fiefia worked in the technology industry for nearly a decade. He saw firsthand how these companies operate. 'To keep users engaged at all cost, big tech companies collect enormous amounts of data on us,' he said during the House Economic Development and Workforce Services Committee meeting two weeks ago. 'What we like, what we watch, who we interact with, and then use it to create algorithms that keep us hooked. That data is then sold to advertisers for billions of dollars,' he added. 'I quickly realized that we are not the customer. We are the product.' In a 2017 Axios interview, Sean Parker, the founding president of Facebook, called himself and other Big Tech creators out for knowingly 'exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology' and doing it anyway. He said Facebook asked, 'How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?' One way is through targeted advertising. One of HB418's most compelling attributes is it would fundamentally change the power dynamic between users and advertisers. 'Advertisers will still be a customer, but we also will be a customer,' Fiefia said. Social media platforms 'will have to fight for our attention, and if it's not safe for our kids (or) if we don't love their privacy standards or terms, if we don't love the values of this company, we can leave' and take our information with us. 'I think that's the control that we all yearn for as users.' With four children, Fiefia said his children won't be given a smartphone until after they turn 16. Social media will gradually be introduced afterward, but 'with strict guards.' 'If you look at leadership in most tech companies, their kids don't have access to social media,' he added, pointing out the hypocrisy. 'We talk about it like it's a normal thing, but we guard our kids from the technology that we're selling and that we're promoting.' Haidt's book, 'The Anxious Generation,' is a testament to the damage technology has done to children's mental health. In his statement supporting the bill, Haidt warned that 'social media companies know that they are facilitating and causing vast harms to our kids and have repeatedly failed to act. Many young people regret their time spent on social media, and feel compelled to use them because all of their friends are using them. Even as we work to reform and regulate existing social media platforms, users should have realistic and safer online alternatives.' Ravi Iyer, a social psychologist who helped in the research of 'The Anxious Generation,' told the Deseret News that HB418 is a step forward in a long fight to 'break these network effects' that are negatively impacting children's mental health. He shared a study that found 72% of teens feel social media manipulates them into spending more time on the platform than they would ideally want to. If HB418 were implemented, it would give 'a lot more choice about the experience that you want, and you can pick the algorithm you want, or your parents can pick the algorithm they want,' he said. 'We don't always have to feel locked into things that we don't enjoy, that we regret, that we have all these unwanted experiences with. 'The reason why these companies have gotten so big, even in the face of many people disliking their products, is because of these network effects,' a challenge that Fiefia's bill aims to tackle and a key reason for Iyer's strong support of its success. Hopefully, that will lead platforms to compete in a way that is of value to users, Iyer added. 'If we can get some way for consumers to move across platforms, then hopefully, they'll start competing for user value' rather than user attention. 'The tech industry's money is going to win a lot of the time, and I'm hopeful that, maybe this time, we can break through.'
Yahoo
26-02-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
New bill would provide extra support for Utah foster children
Utah Foster Care reports that there are around 2,700 children in the state's foster care system at any given time — and only about 1,300 families licensed to foster them. This means a dearth of advocates for a critically vulnerable population. A new bill advanced byRep. Doug Fiefia, R-Herriman, would allow the Utah Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to intervene on behalf of foster children. The Senate floor sponsor is Sen. Todd Weiler, R-Woods Cross. Fiefia called HB302, or 'Minors in State Custody Amendments,' a 'feel-good' bill. It would keep foster children from losing out on Medicaid and federal payouts by giving administrative authority over to the state government to help them stay up to date with those programs. If enacted, HB302 would require Utah's Department of Health and Human Services to do the following: Apply for Medicaid benefits on behalf minors in the custody of the HHS. Apply for federal benefits on behalf of minors in custody, as appropriate. Offer financial literacy training to a minor who received a federal benefit while in the custody of the department If passed, HB302 would go into effect on May 7. The fiscal note on the bill says it would cost the state $1.4 million. 'I think the policy stands on its own. It's a strong policy that needs to happen,' said Senate Minority Leader Luz Escamilla, D-Salt Lake City. 'It's a budget-difficult year, but I think it's something we need to take care of.' Thousands of children age out of foster care every year across the country. House of Providence, a Michigan organization that helps foster children, reports that as many as 20% of former foster children become instantly homeless when they leave foster care; only about 50% of fostered children enter gainful employment by age 24; and less than 3% end up earning a college degree before age 26. Federal benefits for foster care children frequently include essentials like housing and health care, as well as programs that increase quality of life, like employment assistance, per the U.S. Government Accountability Office. In January 2025, the GAO reported that states do not always spend all the federal funding made available to foster care children. Millions are returned every year from states to the national Department of Health and Human Services, despite, as GAO says, 'young people still needing these services.' As the Deseret News previously reported, Utah is in the middle of a historic shortage of foster families. Media reports indicated last year that Utah foster families receive $21 a day, but this doesn't cover the costs of food and child care, in addition to other essentials for young families. 'We are incredibly supportive of this policy,' testified David Litvack, a deputy director at Utah's Department of Health and Human Services, who spoke at the Senate committee hearing and worked with Fiefia on the bill.
