Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Post

Transcript

One last question on on House bill for the data privacy bill, because it's one of those issues that I think from my perspective, correct me if you feel otherwise with AI and all that's happening there, some national efforts and state efforts are forgetting that getting data privacy right on the front end. It's not a panacea, but it's an important step in the direction of AI transparency and privacy and control. So for folks who you know, maybe you were forgetting about the Texas State of Privacy Security Act. Goes into effect pretty soon here, about a month out. So what from your point of view, what is the legacy on that? What do you hope will befall Texans positively from from that law? I think your first point was exactly dead on, which is when we start to talk about artificial intelligence. You can understand that artificial intelligence really is data. It's about the data that's being trained on the data. It's about creating new data. It's about implementation of controls and processes to protect that data. So when we talk about cybersecurity, when you talk about privacy, we talk about AI. At the very center of all this is the data that's been collected. And for me and for a lot of other folks, we just understand that my personal information is my personal information. And we've lived in a society for a long time now where people have not been aware that this data is being collected about them. Maybe they felt that they have nothing to be worried about, so who cares? But part of the legacy, I hope, is just more realization that, hey, what exactly is being collected about me and my kids? OK, How is it being used? Who is it being sold to if it's stolen? OK, Am I going to be notified of that? And what if it's wrong, right. I mean, some of these decisions that are being made on your data are being done without your knowledge at all is being done. Whether it's you want to be able to rent a car, get a hotel room, buy a car. All of that data that semen collected about you and your family in the past is being used to change and influence your decisions today. And So what do we want? We want people to be aware of it. We want them to be able to correct it. And we want them to me minimize the amount of data they're given to other folks. And I also wanted to tell. Industry that hey, you don't have to do this right you don't have to collect that 13 year olds information. You don't have to know you know what school I went to or where I'm going to have to have coffee. I get your commercial interest in it, but that stuff is personal and private to me and and with HB4 we're setting the tone and is being used to model in other states to say hey, this is data it's important let's protect.