Tuberville says he likes to talk to ChatGPT on long drives

Tommy Tuberville chatting with ChatGPT about Medicare and Medicaid on the drive across Alabama is either the most relatable thing a senator has said in years or a mildly alarming window into how policy questions get answered these days. Maybe both. Anyone who has spent hours on I-65 knows the appeal of something to talk to besides the radio. That part is fine, even a little charming.

But there's a reason this story got attention beyond the novelty. Tuberville isn't a random guy killing time, he's a sitting senator running to be governor of a state where Medicaid expansion has been a live political fight for a decade. When he says he's using a chatbot to work through those questions, people are going to wonder whether that's supplementing his own homework or replacing it. Staff exist for a reason, and so do briefings from people who actually administer these programs on the ground.

None of this makes Tuberville unusual. Plenty of Americans now ask AI to explain things they used to ask an expert or just muddle through themselves. The instinct isn't the problem. The problem is what happens when a policymaker treats a chatbot's confident-sounding summary as a substitute for the messy, contested work of understanding how a program actually functions in the real world, with real tradeoffs and real losers.

Tuberville can talk to whatever he wants on the drive home. Voters just deserve to know the difference between passing the time and forming a governing philosophy.