So, where's your X account from?

ABC's Mike Dobuski reports that now X not only knows where you are, but everyone else does too! Plus, Trump signs EO on AI

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
II.

Speaker 2 (00:00):
Lets spend a couple of minutes on the Legacy Retirement
Group dot Com phone line with Mike Debuski, ABC News
Technology reporter. We call it Tech Tuesday with Mike. So.
President Trump signed an executive order yesterday promoting the use
of AI. How far does this go? What is he
trying to do here?

Speaker 1 (00:17):
Yeah, So this is a new program called a Genesis
Mission that the presidents signed yesterday. That's the branding they
have for it, and it is a program that extensibly
encourages the use of artificial intelligence within scientific research. They're
trying to bring together tech companies like OpenAI, but as
the academic world as well that works on these sort

(00:38):
of very complicated projects, projects where the use of generative
artificial intelligence could potentially play a major role. As part
of this, the Department of Energy is actually developing their
own AI platform that uses federal scientific data to train
AI models, and that's something that scientific researchers can go

(00:58):
to as a resource. So it's part of the Trump
administration's larger effort to encourage the use of artificial intelligence
now touching the academic sector. But guys, the larger news
on the Trump administration's AI efforts could come potentially before
the end of the week. There's been rumors that the
President will find a new executive order that would put

(01:18):
a halt to AI legislation at the state level. We've
seen a number of AI state laws crop up in
the last few years as states try to grapple with
this very influential and potentially dangerous technology. Now, the Trump
administration reportedly wants to stop that from happening, but in
favor of creating a more cohesive federal legislation governing the

(01:39):
use of artificial intelligence. This would discourage states from passing
their own state level AI laws and again create this
sort of federal framework for these AI companies to work from.
This is something that we've heard from tech companies like
open ai and Google and others that they want something
that we've seen from the Trump Administration's AI Action Plan

(01:59):
in the that was shown earlier this year. However, the
tractors to all this say that this essentially amounts to
a free ride for tech companies, gives them far too
much leeway to make and develop this very influential technology.
But again, we'll have to wait and see what the
President does here. The rumor is that this could be
signed before the end of the week.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
I'm generally in favor of limiting, you know, federal overreach
and federal regulations on things like this and leaving it
up to individual states generally speaking, Mike, But in this case,
I kind of get it because we don't really know
what we've got yet. I think with AI, we know
what the potential is for it. And if there's a
bunch of different laws and a bunch of different states, well,

(02:40):
this is okay in Ohio, but it's not okay in
Indiana or you know, Pennsylvania, that could really pose some
problems legally.

Speaker 1 (02:48):
Yeah, certainly, And again that's that's what we hear from
the tech companies is that you know, we are in
a race to develop the best artificial intelligence in the world. Specifically,
we're in a race with China, and having to negotiate
a pat work of laws across the country, some of
which may be contradictory, really impedes that progress. And we've
seen a number of laws crop up in the last
few years. Guys, California, Colorado, Utah, and Texas have all

(03:12):
passed sweeping AI legislation aimed at limiting the collection of
personal data from AI companies, forcing AI companies to be
more transparent with the data they collect. Beyond that, there
are also regulations at the state level around using AI
to do things like generate deep fakes of political figures
that generate non consensual pornography. So some really substantive efforts

(03:33):
at the state level, but again nothing passed by Congress
at the federal level. Even still, Florida Governor Ron De
Santis called this move of this potential move by the
president federal government overreached that would stop state's ability to
protect against the predatory appligations that target children. Democratic Senator
Ed Markey says the move amounts President Trump siding with

(03:54):
his billionaire buddies in Silicon Valley. So there is bipartisan
pushback to this, and there is some evidence to suggest
that the Trump administration might be backing away from this
executive order Reuters reported a few days ago, but they're
reconsidering the timing of this, but haven't gone further than that.
So we're just gonna have to wait and see. It
could be very interesting week.

Speaker 2 (04:14):
It is interesting, and I think you could probably take
into consideration some of this individual states concerns you and
keep those protections in place, like Governor DeSantis outlined in
the in the in the federal laws and the federal
rules there. So yeah, very interesting. Speaking with Mike Debuski
from ABC on technology, X made some changes to its

(04:34):
account location setting, so you when you log in, it
kind of knows where you're logging in from. What are
the changes?

Speaker 1 (04:42):
Yeah, not only do you know where or does X
know where you're logging in from? So does everybody else.
This was the major change to their location policy over
the last few days, and it sparks a lot of controversy.
You can now go to any account that you follow,
any accounts on the platform, and find out where they're
posting from the The company says that this was an
effort to be more transparent about you know, their accounts

(05:04):
and you have more insight into kind of who you're
following on this platform. Many made use of that and
found that the accounts that they were following did not,
you know, post from the places they were expecting. Specifically
political accounts. Guys, these are accounts to post regularly about
American politics. They are you sided with both sides in
many cases, but they are found to have been posting

(05:26):
from places like Nigeria and Southeast Asia. Definitely. There's one
account called you Know two hundred that had two hundred
thousand followers. Last week it was called American Voice. This
update rolled out and followers found it was being run
from somewhere in South Asia. Now the account has been deleted.
There's an account with more than a million followers that
posted about President Trump's daughter Avanka Trump sort of the

(05:47):
news account in that case, and according to this Future
is based in Nigeria. So again it really underscores, guys,
just how many foreign accounts you know, do post on
this platform, and just how confusing it can be to
rely on those accounts to get your news, because they
often don't come from sources that you would expect them
to