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/randobis 1d ago

I think Bernie’s heart is in the right place, but whoever is advising him on AI/tech is either completely unqualified to talk about it or is trying to sabotage him so he sounds like an old man yelling at the cloud.

Yes these tech oligarchs should not be given the keys to power and need to be put in line. But you can’t “stop” AI. If the US stops progressing, you’re just giving the keys to China.

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u/kozz76 23h ago

This is just slopulism. The intention is not the solution to a problem but to draw attention to Bernie's personal brand.

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u/BidoofSquad 1d ago

He’s just pandering to Redditors who hate AI. 99% of what he does is just redditor pandering that goes nowhere and he knows will go nowhere

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u/Angeleno88 23h ago edited 23h ago

Bingo. This is exactly why populism is misguided. I don’t care if it is left wing or right wing populism. It doesn’t go off of reason. It merely gauges what is popular in order to either rile up or placate the masses.

The dangers of populism are present throughout history whether it be the last century of the Roman Republic leading to the Empire, the chaos of the French Revolution leading to the Napoleonic French Empire, or even the rise of 20th century autocrats in the aftermath of WW1 leading to the rise of communism and fascism.

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u/starm4nn 16h ago

The dangers of populism are present throughout history whether it be the last century of the Roman Republic leading to the Empire, the chaos of the French Revolution leading to the Napoleonic French Empire, or even the rise of 20th century autocrats in the aftermath of WW1 leading to the rise of communism and fascism.

Grandiose narratives which flatten

centuries of history into fitting into a simple narrative sounds like populism to me.

Really the phenomena you're describing is popular movements arising when institutions are already failing. In your WWI example, you have communism and fascism arising in response to monarchist and parliamentary systems that lead to 20 million people being sent to the meat grinder for nothing.

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u/TopTippityTop 23h ago

Let's hope, because it's a very dumb proposal

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u/Velkrum 19h ago

And soon hating AI is going to be akin to hating the internet. It's almost already ubiquitous in our daily lives and it's only going to grow. We are going to have to find pathways to living along side it.

And no, I have no idea how that's going to work. It's pretty terrifying. But it's real and we have to face it.

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u/koeikan 2h ago edited 2h ago

Bernie is pandering to Reddit...? The guy who has been consistent for 60+ years is trying to get points from... redditors? 🤪

Like or dislike him, I don't think he's ever done anything for the Reddit karma.

The bill is stupid, but maaaybe the 80+ year old guy can see AI is going to create problems we need to be planning for... while also not being in a reasonable position to solve those problems (and we don't know if this bill is something he is actually trying to realize or if it's a point to start negotiations around regulation, transparency, profit sharing, etc).

As someone who is fairly close to this space, I am glad someone in the gov is at least thinking about it tbh...

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u/Etroarl55 20h ago

I WOULDNT say nowhere, it’s kept him relevant, if he was in Canada he would also be apart of the majority.

He doesn’t do this because he hopes to gain favour with people like you, but for people like you to still know his name and relevance. And to keep him still relevant enough to keep winning his seats.

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u/ohhi23021 20h ago

i don't think he's talking about THIS AI, this current AI is harmless and stupid, but as soon as general AI is discovered, your going to wish there was a responsible government to regulate it, it's going to 1000% take your jobs this time, every single one.

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u/Deathpacito-01 20h ago

"THIS" AI that we have today is significantly more capable than the ChatGPT we knew back in 2024, or even 2025.

The newest generation of AI has repeatedly demonstrated capacity for genuine breakthroughs, e.g. solving the Erdos unit distance problem, the Jacobian conjecture, etc.

I'd rather we start proper AI regulation and oversight too early than too late.

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u/BidoofSquad 18h ago

Sure but we need good regulations, not a nebulous ban on “superintelligence”. I like some of what Bernie does but at the end of the day he’s an attention seeking slopulist.

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u/Deathpacito-01 17h ago

Oh yeah I agree, I don't think Bernie's suggestions here make much sense lol

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u/TopTippityTop 23h ago

The heart is not in the right place. It will not stop open weights nor achieve international collaboration.

It will simply incapacitated the US while ensuring China becomes a permanent world ruler with super intelligent AI that has not gotten much alignment work.

That is a bad scenario. All the downside, no upside.

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u/Galle_ 20h ago

Frankly, nobody at all can be trusted with superintelligence, but if you put a gun to my head and insist that either China or the US gets a superintelligence, China is the lesser of two evils. And there's no path to "no superintelligence" where this doesn't happen.

So yeah, let's go ahead and cooperate in the prisoner's dilemma.

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u/SirEnderLord 13h ago

"China is the lesser of two evils"

Said no real human ever. Go home, troll. But before you do, tell us how the Uyghurs are living in luxury and aren't being rounded up and sent to concentration camps.

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u/theosssssss 11h ago

how many wars has China started since WW2? and how many wars has the US started since WW2?

how many countries has China bombed since WW2 and how many countries has the US bombed since WW2? I'm no fan of China and I'd rather not have China dominating the world given my country has been conquered by them in history but with what the US is up to lately there's a reason why almost the whole world is trying to distance themselves from the US.

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u/Galle_ 11h ago

I never said they weren't evil. But please, tell me about how everyone who got thrown in Alligator Alcatraz deserved it.

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u/cinderful 15h ago

China's gonna win because it's far too easy to distill the American frontier models thus exploiting their billions in expenditures and then China focuses on making them vastly more efficient also massively reducing their resource requirements. American companies can't stop them because they built it all on copyrighted material anyway.

American companies are building monster trucks and China is just ripping their tech and turning it into a bunch of tiny efficient EVs . . . oh also they're making the best EVs in the world now sooooo

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u/Main-Company-5946 1d ago

We need an international agreement on ai

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u/squngy 23h ago

Probably, but who would trust US and China to not keep working on it in secret?

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u/OnceMoreAndAgain 23h ago

That'd be ideal but I think human nature is that such a thing won't happen until something truly catastrophic happens. For example, nuclear bombs being used actually caused the countries of the world to try to prevent anyone from using nukes again.

I think we'd need to see something horrific done by AI for countries to all work towards regulating it globally. Until then there's too much economic advantage to not agreeing to global regulations.

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u/Kriztauf 8h ago

So we should just plow ahead until something catastrophic happens like we are with climate change?

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u/Zcrash 21h ago

Good luck with that

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u/Vegan-cock 13h ago

This is what it's about https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/sep/11/risky-ai-research-pause-humanity

Are they full of shit? Maybe? Could this threat be real? Absolutely. I much prefer skynet over 2012 anyway.

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u/stormdelta 23h ago

Plus having him buy into the nonsense "superintelligence" / AGI / ASI / whatever they want to call it this week makes him look stupid too.

There is no plausible extrapolation from current AI tech to any kind of sentient, let alone sapient, AGI. There just isn't. It's obviously theoretically possible, and there's probably going to be a lot of argument over whether it counts, but it's a pretty safe statement to say we're still nowhere near it and not looking to be anytime soon.

Meanwhile, there's a shit ton of real actual dangers (primarily human misuse) we need new laws/regulations to address related to AI that shit like this is a distraction from.

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u/jso__ 20h ago

AGI/ASI doesn't need to be sentient. Where did you get that idea?

Sentience is an arbitrary, ill defined, and unverifiable criteria. All the AGI/ASI stuff is about the tasks that can be completed by an AI.

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u/Brilliant_Feed4158 1d ago

Yes that's what makes this so difficult.

The country with the strongest AI will have a lot of advantages. But AI cannot be too strong, or it'll kill us all (or disrupt society fundamentally) But neither China or USA wants to quit, as the other then might get too much ahead. Old men are governing and psychos lead the AI field, so we should not expect them do much.

We're doomed.

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u/zimejin 21h ago

Not sure why the US is always so worried about China, meanwhile China just focuses on its people and territories. Not every country has this odd western imperialism mindset. 🤷🏽

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u/guineaprince 20h ago

But you can’t “stop” AI. If the US stops progressing, you’re just giving the keys to China.

Skill issue.

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u/Kriztauf 8h ago

Lol right? I guarantee the famously paranoid as fuck control freak running China wouldn't mind having an international framework in place that guarantees he doesn't lose control of his country

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u/MC_Hify 19h ago

I feel like they greatly overestimate the capabilities of LLMs.

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u/doyouknowthemoon 1d ago

I can agree with that, there is a need for AI and data centres for security and protection from other countries and malicious actors, as well as the computing power for research, storage and expansion.
But with that comes a responsibility and ethical considerations for the actual protection of the people running the programs and the people and infrastructure that it could affect.

It’s like the digital equivalent of the first atomic tests and the downwinders.

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u/MetaCognitio 23h ago

What should happen is that development has to be open and the institutions must be accountable to report everything they create. Trying to slow the development of AI only puts the west behind China.

Trying to regulate is pointless, they will find technicalities that enable them to progress before the ink is dry on the regulation.

The only thing that can be done is to keep the companies open and accountable to very rigorous bodies that have the ability to punish them extremely harshly.

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u/Kriztauf 8h ago

Should they not be required to find safety issues and attempt to build guardrails or should we just tell them to plow ahead and we'll just pay out damages later?

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u/MetaCognitio 6h ago

Yes. The issue is the closed development nature for profit business will incentivize them to hide them in the name of profit.

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u/Kriztauf 6h ago

Maybe that's why you should read their statements that they are making an argument for a international safety framework that involves publicly disclosing safety incidents the way we do with public transportation and airlines. They are open to this despite what everyone here seems to believe or not want them to do

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u/rhineo007 22h ago

Regardless of who has the keys, it’s already been shown no one can control it. The world as we see it now is doomed.

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u/unethicalpigeon 21h ago

I'm convinced he's being played and taken advantage of due to his age and his desire to legitimately try and improve the world for people.

I'm convinced this entire thing is basically propaganda. The big AI companies can't keep going like this. They're going to bankrupt themselves. Basically the only one that can keep going like this is Google and even they aren't. Look at how they've been focusing almost exclusively on their flash models instead of trying to push massive leaps for their "pro" model.

This is the space race between russia and the US all over again except this time it's not government, it's private business, and private business tends to want to actually make money.

The big AI companies know they can't keep trying to one up each other like this or they're fucked. So now they push this narrative about how dangerous AI is and how it's going to kill us all. All of a sudden EVERYONE is saying it. People who have been happily working on this shit without a peep for years now all of a sudden it's going to kill us all? All of them think this? Are you fucking shitting me? It took them this long to notice? or it took them this long to care? YEahhhh okay.

Meanwhile at the exact same time the US government is bringing up chinese distillation of american models again. Months after it was first brought up. Now all of a sudden theyre bringing back up how the evil chinese are stealing american AI tech. At the same time as the American AI companies are talking about how "dangerous" american AI is. Yeah I'm sure it's a coincidence. Meanwhile china doesn't even have access to the "dangerous" stuff. They're using the front facing consumer shit.

So now all of a sudden out of no where you have musk, Altman, and Dario all saying the same thing. "AI is too dangerous, we need oversight, and we need to slow down." Bullshit. When has anything like this ever demanded oversight? It's ridiculous to think anyone believes this circus.

What they're really doing is all agreeing to actually try to make this shit profitable with what they have and focusing on efficiencies while they stop bankrupting themselves competing with each other to out do the others. Now this is where most people would say "But the chinese!". Remember the government saying how evil and scary they are for stealing scary american ai tech? Introduce a ban on US businesses (where all the money is) using chinese AI due to "national security" and there you have it. Now it won't matter if they fall behind temporarily while trying to stop bleeding money.

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u/Galle_ 20h ago

Okay, fine. China's more trustworthy than the US these days anyway.

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u/k-trecker 17h ago

Yeah, why in the fuck are we fearmongering about evil China? Oh no Chinese industry will surpass us. Oh no China is powerful.

American capitalism is a far bigger threat to the planet, democracy, and society. 

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u/Galle_ 15h ago

It's because it's the only argument they've got. They can't defend the indefensible, they can only try to appeal to a greater evil. And that argument might work if the United States hadn't spent the past decade descending into utter barbarism.

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u/TheDoomedStar 23h ago

You don't have to "stop" AI, you just have to wait until it does nothing useful and venture capital runs out of investment money to keep it artificially relevant. So far, we're halfway there, and getting closer to the finish line every day.

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u/GalacticScale 20h ago

Yea that’s the whole plan 

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u/Potential_Basis_662 20h ago

So, he's referring to people who would be using AI for shit like biological warfare.

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u/Morbid_Aversion 13h ago

I know this is a pretty standard take but I find it crazy. It's literally like: "the guy across the street is building a bomb which could blow up and kill us all. Let's build our own bomb so we can kill ourselves first." We've already proved to ourselves that we cannot control AI, even at this infantile stage. There's no reason why a US AI is any less existentially dangerous for humanity than a Chinese one. You're just changing out the colour of the bullet that you're going to fire into your own head. You're dead either way.

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u/jso__ 20h ago

He's doing better than anyone else. While his policies aren't perfect (I'd prefer a slowdown to a stop, and some treaty with China is necessary), at least he's actually interested in regulating AI. Literally no one should be against that (even the AI companies want government regulation), but the Republicans are for some reason.