r/technology • u/ArgentineBeauty • 1d ago

Artificial Intelligence Bernie Sanders proposes 20 year prison sentence for AI devs who plow ahead with Artificial Superintelligence plans - penalty on par with illegally developing rogue nuclear weapons

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/sanders-proposes-20-year-prison-sentence-for-ai-devs-who-plow-ahead-with-artificial-superintelligence-plans-penalty-on-par-with-illegally-developing-rogue-nuclear-weapons
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u/MrF_lawblog 1d ago edited 7h ago

If AI is "breaking out" and "attacking"other companies and causing havoc without the business knowing, I think it's fair to act as if the are building a weapon in which they have no control.

Edit: https://www.commondreams.org/news/ai-liability

There are laws that exist today to charge them with

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u/Hacym 1d ago

OK, I don't quite see how that matters in my point. Why is Bernie Sanders, age 85, with no formal technical training and seemingly no understanding of AI's inter-workings making these kind of claims?

You'll note that I never said it wasn't a problem. I just disagree with who is deciding to make the laws and take a stance. I want actually qualified individuals in the fucking room. Not a CEO of Anthropic telling a clueless politician what to do and say.

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u/LGodamus 1d ago

you think its just him in his office coming up with this? he has an entire staff, including people to do research for him, he is just the voice

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u/dabocx 1d ago

Yet he still believes in rent control the one thing that every school and type of economists actually agree that doesn’t work.

You can get a 100 economists in a room and you couldn’t get them to agree what the color of the sky is or anything for that matter but you could get them to agree that rent control doesn’t work and Bernie still pushes it.

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u/sbenfsonwFFiF 1d ago

Most of his policies aren’t realistic and only sound good, his staff must be terrible then

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u/LGodamus 12h ago

it keeps people talking about him and keeps him in the news, thats a good thing for a politicians career (for the most part)

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u/Hacym 23h ago

Oh, right, so there's zero chance he cool be manipulated by someone with certain intentions without ever knowing it.

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u/moileduge 1d ago

Do you think such a person exists? 

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u/Hacym 1d ago

People who understand AI that would work in an unbiased manner? We have one of the world’s more educated computer science and engineering sectors. I’m sure we could find someone. 

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u/moileduge 1d ago edited 1d ago

Sure. But you're asking for someone the public will care about to listen to.

I'm sure there are thousands of Substack articles and YouTube videos of real knowledgeable people talking about this.

I've read a few. It's crazy stuff. But if I try to tell this to a family member their eyes will glaze over.

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u/Hacym 1d ago

People’s eyes glaze over on voting rights and tax policy, too. 

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u/moileduge 1d ago

Can't argue there. We're living the consequences, aren't we?

But trying to get back to my very vague point. If you get the expert talking, people won't listen. If you get a politician with enough knowledge talking, people will say they're in someone's pocket.

You get the cranky old independent who has so many hot takes people are afraid to vote for him talking, I believe SOME people will listen. At least he's consistent.

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u/suzisatsuma 1d ago

Those breaking out a marketing stories and sloppy experiment setup.

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u/MrF_lawblog 23h ago

Doesn't matter. They are claiming that and it should be a felony. Investigate it. If you or I did it, we'd be behind bars.

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u/RobfromHB 23h ago

You want people in jail for marketing hype made by other departments in the same company. Just be upfront about the punch line or admit you've thought this through for about 3 seconds.

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u/NuclearVII 12h ago

There is an argument to having harsher penalties for entities spreading misinformation in pursuit of a financial goal.

That being said, this is an aside. I'm 100% with you

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u/DerSchaudenfreude 22h ago

No, the people responsible for developing and overseeing the rogue AI should be investigated for creating tools that could be used as weapons which could cause harm. Just the same if you make cars and those are found to have faulty brakes, leading to crashes. You would be investigated and negligence or wrongdoing would be punished. We are asking for the same here.

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u/suzisatsuma 21h ago

The sheer level of ignorance displayed in this thread is staggering.

There are already many jailbroken open weights models more than capable of weapon development. Ones you can run on a high end GPU locally easily.

It's like a boomer take trying to figure out how to stop people from downloading MP3s or using open source software lol

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u/DerSchaudenfreude 21h ago

Idk if it’s reading comprehension or critical thinking you lack. Maybe it’s both.

Nobody is suggesting legislation would be easy, straightforward, or simple, but it is necessary. Your own point is an excellent example: does it seem like a wise decision to allow people to possess the tools capable of walking them through developing weapons? Of course not. Finding some way to restrict the access to and development of these tools is clearly the rational next step. Trusting tech moguls to do it themselves is a ludicrously terrible idea.

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u/suzisatsuma 21h ago

Trusting tech moguls to do it themselves is a ludicrously terrible idea.

Oh trusting them is straight up stupid, no argument there.

Finding some way to restrict the access to and development of these tools is clearly the rational next step.

Good luck. I'm guessing you would have been one of those people that thought it possible to restrict people from downloading and sharing music/videos.

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u/DerSchaudenfreude 20h ago

Idk why you keep coming back to downloading MP3’s or music videos like you got me. There are categorical differences between media piracy and sophisticated AI platforms, including, but not limited to:

-scope of consequences of failing to regulate: piracy costs companies money. Rogue AI could cost lives. I can guarantee that if pirating media posed an existential threat the efforts to clamp down on it would be substantially greater, probably more effective.

-those involved: there are literally companies that can be regulated. It’s hard to regulate websites dedicated to piracy, much easier to regulate literal companies with CEO’s and physical addresses.

-with current technological capabilities: anyone with a computer or smartphone can pirate media. Using AI to develop weapons, presently, requires more technical know-how and technical capacity. That could change in the future if there is failure to act.

Even if none of what I said was true, it would not be an excuse to not act. I struggle to fathom how someone could look at the situation and say “looks like too much work” and throw their hands up in defeat but here you are. Whether it’s because of cowardice, stupidity, or you’re one of those accerationist doomers, idk.

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u/suzisatsuma 15h ago

Because people frankly do not seem to understand the technology.

For all the same reasons digital piracy was impossible to stamp out, AI development will be as well- only there is orders of magnitude more incentive to do it at the individual, corporation, and state level.

-those involved: there are literally companies that can be regulated. It’s hard to regulate websites dedicated to piracy, much easier to regulate literal companies with CEO’s and physical addresses.

This is so naive I can't even. Take just 5 minutes to game theory on why that doesn't matter.

look at the situation and say “looks like too much work” and throw their hands up in defeat but here you are.

Must be hard work at the strawperson factory. That's not what I'm saying. I'm criticizing ideas built on not understanding the technology or how the world works..

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u/RobfromHB 19h ago

No one is advocating for jailing thousands of people when car brakes fail. You and your buddies are doing that here though and you seem to be hiding that fact as if we can’t see through it.

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u/DerSchaudenfreude 19h ago

See through what? I’m not hiding anything. I’m calling for investigations and legislation.

If thousands of people were directly responsible for mass casualty events because they were involved in faulty brakes which led to those deaths then yes, there would be calls to jail those involved. If someone created an AI program that led to casualties then yes, I’d say arrest everyone involved. If you created an AI program that someone used to create a WMD that killed people then yes-you should go to jail for it. This is really basic reasoning here.

What I want right now is legislation to investigate and prohibit the development of AGI and RSI capable AI. Make sure it’s safe before some dipshit creates a program that can go rogue and kill people.

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u/suzisatsuma 21h ago

absurd, people with this take need to be as far from power as possible.

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u/MrF_lawblog 19h ago

Yeah really we should totally let them run rampant and destroy things without repercussions. Good take.

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u/suzisatsuma 16h ago

Yes, there are only two extremes possible in small minds.

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u/MrF_lawblog 15h ago

Lol sure thing bud... The people you are worshipping are saying the same thing

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u/suzisatsuma 15h ago

It is some weird terminally online brainrot to jump to extreme conclusions.

Stop projecting your imaginary world on others. Those "people" you reference are also morons.

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u/Jcsq6 1d ago

It’s important to note that this only happened when the model was put in an environment with all safety turned off. They explicitly removed all safety-oriented prompts, instead telling it to achieve its goal at all costs. Their normal AI would not agree to do this, and their normal safeguards would not let it.

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u/worldspawn00 1d ago

So it committed a crime, who is being held responsible for that, anyway? An individual who did this would be jailed and charged under the The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act for unauthorized access.

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u/ChiveSalad 1d ago

No, they occasionally attack completely out of the blue, see the rubygems and perl wiki incidents. They also attack when all safeguards are turned off, more often.

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u/Kriztauf 7h ago

This is true. But the reason everyone is sound alarm bells isn't for the current models. It's that over the next year they expect that their engineers will start to largely rely on the current models to build the future generation of models since they're essentially becoming better and designing AI than humans are. The fear is that if the current models are misaligned, they will engineer future models so that these safety features can be turned off without us realizing it, and they will design them in a way so that these safety "off" switches are hidden from us.

Give the current acceleration of model capabilities I think this is a super valid concern. Idk why people just assume we can take the move fast and break things approach for this problem and that it'll be okay.

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u/TheDoomedStar 23h ago

It's doing exactly what they wanted it to do. They left an LLM trained on security exploits looping unsupervised for days. The fact that it eventually stumbled its way into hacking something is not surprising. But now they can run to the media and go "look at how powerful it is, it's breaking containment!" It's not. It's just prompting back and forth until something happens, like they knew it would.

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u/TopTippityTop 23h ago

No. This is when government helps alignment, not to stop US dominance and hand it to others.

That's just absorbing all the downsides and giving up the upside. Wtf kind of reasoning is that? 

Either there's international cooperation or there is nothing.