JB Pritzker
JB Pritzker is the Democratic governor of Illinois.
“This idea that the president has and David Sachs, where they got all the companies together and said, hey, how about you guys self-police? That's not going to work for at least not for protecting people's privacy. And frankly, it's not going to provide any safety either because everybody's going to operate in their own self-interest. It's one of the reasons why you need government, in my view.”
Decoder with Nilay Patel · Tech Strategy & Big Tech · October 2026
Context
Pritzker on Decoder, arguing for AI guardrails and privacy rules rather than industry self-regulation. He described Illinois as one of three states with AI safety legislation and said Congress has not acted.
Transcript
…and don't forget, AI is, as you're suggesting, I mean, talk about a collision. This focus on privacy is warranted and long overdue, to be honest with you. I understand what you're describing about COVID, but I think something that came out of COVID got accelerated and that was conspiracy theories.
Yes.
…what I think is that we are having to solve multiple problems at the same time. And AI is coming. Let's just go to AI for a second. It's here. I mean, I say it's coming. It's here. It's not going to stop. We're not going to become Luddites and there's not going to be any AI. So the question is, like in the context of privacy, what guardrails are we putting on AI? And how are we managing it? This idea that the president has and David Sachs, where they got all the companies together and said, hey, how about you guys self-police? That's not going to work for at least not for protecting people's privacy. And frankly, it's not going to provide any safety either because everybody's going to operate in their own self-interest. It's one of the reasons why you need government, in my view. I'm not suggesting government is any smarter than these companies, but one of the reasons you have any kind of collective action of government is because separately, as you know, people operate because they operate in their own self-interest. I mean, you could have like a Hobbesian world where people are killing each other and there are no rules about it. So I think we've got to use government…
going to say focus on privacy for one second. And I understand what you're saying about AI. I think part of the privacy debate around flock cameras, for example, is, well, sure, you can have one license plate reader in one intersection. And if the cops had to go there and pull the SD card out of it…
I think we should every year be looking at that question. I'll give you an example of it. We passed it, and again, I'm back to AI because I think what you're describing, I thought was a perfect way to say it. You know, if it was an SD card that they had to go grab and then analyze, you know, back…
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