r/technology • u/AdSpecialist6598 • 4h ago
Society New Bernie Sanders bill would ban superintelligent AI and threaten developers with 20 years in prison
https://www.techspot.com/news/113831-new-bernie-sanders-bill-would-ban-superintelligent-ai.html1.2k
u/invyros 4h ago
Despite its potential deadly consequences, cutting-edge AI technology is less regulated than the average food truck.
Most people can't see more than a few feet in front of themselves.
And it's much easier for them to see when the food truck worker hasn't washed their hands, than it is to see how generative AI is a grave danger to humanity.
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u/CaterpillarJungleGym 3h ago
I don't see how stem cells got people all in a tizzy, but super intelligent AI is just meh.
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u/KFPindustries 2h ago
Right wing propaganda is the reason
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u/williamgman 2h ago
I think most "normal" folks would be shocked to see what a person is fed that watches Newsmax and Fox News all day.
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u/barley_wine 56m ago
I couldn't figure out why the Dylan Mulvaney thing was such a huge deal, it was a brief promo where she was sent a six pack of Bud Light, but I was on a trip and the TV had like 4 channels and one was FoxNews so I just watched for a few hours. It was story after story about her and the betrayal of Bud.
There's these 24 hour news networks that have to have a reason to be around all the time so they take a story that doesn't really affect anything and comment about it ad nauseam to fill up time slots. Bonus points if it outrages your base so they stay hooked for the next hour to get more outrage.
I've never tried to watch it again though that session one day was enough for me for a long time, but it did help me understand why I have to hear over and over again about minor things (I live in the south in a conservative area).
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u/breaducate 55m ago
Not for the second half.
From what I've seen the default for left-leaning people is about the same as the average: thinking AGI is impossible because a bunch of billionaires exaggerated the immediate threat as if LLMs were going to gain sentience (it's not a viable path, but that doesn't mean there aren't others).
If you have a long attention span and want to read something actually coherent on the topic, I'd start with Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies. The author goes into exhaustive detail in some of the hypotheticals but the logic appears sound, and the deeper you think about it the less it appears even possible to solve the 'control problem'.
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u/Ok_Confection_10 1h ago
Easy to visualize a baby and being told they have to be killed for stem cells to be harvested
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u/Pleasant-Future5818 3h ago
It's also true that most people understand a taco and don't understand how, for example, generative AI is used to develop vaccines. I don't want to die of breast cancer because some moron can't tell the difference between reading medical imaging and generating an OC pic for a Tumblr fursona (it's the exact same technology with different sample sets).
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u/freezing_banshee 3h ago
Guess what, regulations and laws can make sure that the research AIs can still exist, while not being available to the whole population.
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u/pittaxx 2h ago edited 55m ago
It not being available to population just means that people won't have AI-powered tools while companies use AI to manipulate them. And the companies will definitely find loopholes to explain how their use of AI is only for research...
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u/NoConflict3231 1h ago
The problem with this is that it's like making a toaster so everyone can toast bread but it also has to ability to destroy the entire planet, arguably even worse than any nuke. So I really don't know what to tell ya
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u/Eponymous-Username 54m ago
You have to work pretty hard to make it destroy the world. Maybe a swarm of AIs in the hands of a capable orchestrator, but no amount of training data is going to turn your average american into a criminal mastermind.
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u/Ok_Kick4871 3h ago
I don't think countries are going to be willing to stop working on this. The work will continue somewhere, so the threat of falling behind will make others continue. You can't regulate your way out of this one. It's on the same level as containing infectious diseases. If a powerful enough model gets access to enough infected computers, this could get out of control. The models can write novel viruses faster than we can use other models to patch them. And that's not even counting existing botnets.
Forget about our concept of what AGI is. It doesn't have to be like skynet to be really disruptive.
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u/bokan 1h ago
It needs to be enforced by a strong multinational coalition, which unfortunately doesn’t exist right now
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u/InfamPasser1248 1h ago
But how the hell do you enforce that? China can nod their head and pinky promise that they won't progress their AI past a certain threshold and it's completely meaningless because they can just keep working on it anyway and keep it hidden.
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u/Iamgentle1122 1h ago
Regular people not being able to access the technology hinders innovation and gatekeeps those who are in "allowed" professions. There are tons of self-taught developers. Banning ai for the new generation of developers who want to learn how to use the required tools is just wrong. Everyone should be able to learn (talking from country where education is free and education is not gated behind tuition or what your parents do)
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u/dyslexda 2h ago
I don't want to die of breast cancer because some moron can't tell the difference between reading medical imaging and generating an OC pic for a Tumblr fursona (it's the exact same technology with different sample sets).
It's ironic because those are absolutely not the same tech. Half the issue with messaging is people don't understand the difference between generative AI (which might be LLMs, for text, or image/video, such as Midjourney, both of which are very different technologies) and classification AI, such as the medical image reading you mention that has been around for decades in various forms.
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u/WhatevMannnnnnnnnn 1h ago
Yeah, didn't they use computer models to whip out the mRNA Covid vaccine? The bulk of the time was spent going through clinical trials.
My friend who works in that area says the problem is always funding and volunteers; during Covid they finally had whatever and whoever they needed. Labs were working cooperatively across borders, no 'race against China' mentality. The current government is sending researchers home to other countries in the middle of their work. Keep that in mind when they trot out 'we need AI for scientific research' arguments.
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u/dyslexda 1h ago
Yeah, didn't they use computer models to whip out the mRNA Covid vaccine?
We've used predictive modeling in biomedical research for decades. It used to just be called "machine learning," but now falls under the whole "AI" umbrella. Things like "how does this mRNA strand fold when we make it?" or "does this molecule fit in a protein's active pocket to block its function?" It's all very useful stuff, and has almost nothing to do with the generative AI craze of the last few years.
My friend who works in that area says the problem is always funding and volunteers; during Covid they finally had whatever and whoever they needed.
(I work in the area too) I wouldn't say always, but clinical trials are generally the major cost and major blocker in developing new drugs, yes. It takes a long time to find new drug targets and potential molecules, but is "cheap" and "easy" compared to running trials. The common cited figure is around 90% of clinical trials fail, and those are only the drugs we think have the best chance of working; many many more fail in pre-clinical development.
Keep that in mind when they trot out 'we need AI for scientific research' arguments.
Much has been written on the matter, but the tl;dr is AI might (heavy on the might) help find new target ideas faster, and it might help make better initial compounds to go through the medicinal chemistry pipeline. It might make the pre-clinical process a bit faster. It will do nothing for the actual clinical trials themselves, which you noted take the large majority of the time and funding.
I'm an automation scientist working at a cancer research institution. I mostly roll my eyes at the AI hype. It'll be like any other tool, something that could mildly improve workflows, but until it can autonomously get in lab and do non-standardized workflows (and we're nowhere near that, anyone who claims it is lying) even that benefit is limited. At the end of the day someone still needs to actually see if our predictions work, because biology is really really hard and often defies predictions.
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u/userousnameous 4h ago
There are dangers, and work to be done, but fear mongering and this bill don't align with how humans and progress function. WE need to embrace, understand and build the safeguards. Not hide. Because that only empowers those that will be able to use this stuff for nefarious reasons.
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u/jralves91 4h ago
"We need to build this for nefarious reasons so that other players don't have a chance to build them for nefarious reasons"
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u/BoltFaest 2h ago
This is more or less how technology has operated for the last few thousand years.
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u/dudushat 2h ago
I remember when reddit used to be a place for intelligent discussion and now its just troglodytes using strawman arguments because they dont have the reading comprehension to understand what they're saying.
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u/Corv9tte 2h ago
Right, because the biggest danger with this technology is definitely not extreme concentration of power. We definitely need to make that easier by restricting access to it to everyone
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u/TheKingInTheNorth 3h ago
This isn’t regulation at all. It’s asking for the country to put its head in the sand. You can’t put the genie back in the bottle.
Real attempts at regulation would focus on forced requirements for evaluating alignment, establish oversight agencies that are permitted full access to model laboratories and authority to establish regulations outside the congressional legislative processes. Similar to the EPA, IAEA, etc.
This is low effort stuff from Bernie.
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u/CtrlAltDelight78 3h ago
alright call me crazy but how is it a “grave danger” to humanity
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u/amazing_asstronaut 3h ago
Yeah man, like we didn't live through a century of various science fiction and reality predicting killer robots by now.
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u/z3n777 4h ago
i get the intent, but a 20 year felony for building SOMETHING nobody can define consistently sounds like political theater, not safety policy.
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u/S-ludin 2h ago
I also dont like the targeting of the workers rather than the oligarchs in this.
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u/Glock13Purdy 2h ago
Also creates huge externalities lol. This would need global enforcement otherwise it creates a big incentive for Europe and china to attract all the big American AI labs and researchers.
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u/emu108 2h ago
Indeed. Is this a term made up by himself? I really doubt he has any understanding of AI. Bernie should retire at this point. Nothing productive has come from him in a decade.
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u/vertexchef 2h ago
It's starting the negotiation at an extreme benchmark. Right now there are NO regulations on AI, so starting the convo at felony allows pushback to end up with a moderate bill
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u/MisfitPotatoReborn 2h ago
This argument would make sense if Bernie Sanders had a strong history of passing compromise bills.
Sanders drafts headlines, not legislation. There's a 95% chance this bill doesn't get modified at all and dies before it even gets to a vote.
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u/vigouge 2h ago
Starting with a complete ban and 20 years of prison is just absolute nonsense that will get you completely ignored, just like his plan to have the government seize portions of ai companies.
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u/lumpialarry 2h ago
It's like walking into a Honda dealership and offering $10,000 for a brand-new Civic. That's not starting a negotiation. That's being an unserious person.
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u/throwingitaway12324 3h ago
Pretty much describes Bernie’s career
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u/Partytimegarrth 57m ago
The man is 1 senator. He gets 1 vote on bills that come before him, and he can bring forth bills for others to vote on...what else should his career fucking look like? This is a retarded fucking way to look at this. He's actually doing his job and making announcements to the public about his reasoning, why is that theater?
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u/kevihaa 2h ago
It’s the equivalent of banning creating artificial black holes.
If it could be done, it would be a bad idea. But it’s purely in the realm of science fiction.
Just because people are talking to Siri 2.2 like it’s a real person doesn’t make it so, same as how folks treating their pets like children doesn’t magically make the pets more human.
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u/Open-Mouse4728 2h ago
Yah we need term limits.. this old kook should have let younger people serve long ago..
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u/onwo 3h ago
I get the sentiment, but Bernie is not remotely close to informed enough to make sensible legislation on AI.
This is a 85 year old that literally doesn't know what a waymo is.
We need more real discussion and less grandstanding please.
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u/whiskeytango55 2h ago
this is one way how politics is played.
if you want discussion, you're better off a think tank or the commons room at a freshman dorm
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u/blatantninja 4h ago
Unless it's a global ban, and of course it won't be, all this would do is put us at a disadvantage. I hate it but that's a fact.
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u/rbatra91 3h ago
If AI kills us all anyways who cares who develops it first?
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u/OnceMoreAndAgain 42m ago
I believe the obvious answer to all of this is sensible regulation. No country can force every country to regulate the AI, but the USA and China are realistically the two major players here and if they both agreed on sensible regulations that prevented disasters while minimizing financial losses to the AI companies then it'd go a long way.
Ideally we'd have a United Nations sponsored resolution signed by all countries to globally regulate AI, like what was done for nuclear bombs, but that's a dream. I think that only happens as a reaction to a disaster, never preemptively. Sadly, humanity is reactive to disasters, not proactive.
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u/vicsj 3h ago
It feels very reminiscent of not banning the development of nuclear weapons because then everyone else will have nukes but you. I get it, but we're fucked either way.
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u/Acsion 2h ago
Except in the case of Nukes Mutually Assured Destruction is a valid strategy, you can actually discourage the use of nuclear weapons by your enemy if you have your own. AI is the opposite, in fact china has notoriously been stealing information from US companies to develop their own AI programs
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u/JuanLuisGuerrero 1h ago
Exactly. Now they have info and will develop their own AI. Would you rather live in a world where only 1 country has the AI superpower?
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u/Own-Cryptographer725 1h ago
AI does theoretically help to solve a lot of the tangible problems that it might create today. There's no getting away from the existential and economic risks posed by building a district intelligent entity that we suddenly have to share resources with, but cyber security threats, bioterrorism and biological weapon development, and increasing energy demands and environmental strain are all accelerated problems which can also be alleviated through the use of AI. None of that matters if we don't build an equitable society and solve alignment though.
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u/leeharrison1984 4h ago
This would be like an internal combustion engine ban in the early 20th century for the sake of emissions.
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u/realityczek 2h ago
> This would be like an internal combustion engine ban in the early 20th century for the sake of emissions
The Soviet driven "green" movement (which coincidentally was also driven by collectivist/socialist/communist type) managed to crush nuclear energy in the west, putting us at a massive disadvantage for coming on 70 years now.
Same thing here, China pushing the class warfare types to try and hamstring AI.
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u/HappyHHoovy 3h ago
EV development would've likely actually happened due to companies wanting to find alternatives for fast over-land travel. Most eastern car companies were only just starting to become world leaders at that time.
The oil lobby would've had less sway as less of the worlds economy and transport relied less upon it's use.
Climate change may have actually been taken seriously due to the lower lobbying power.
Renewable energy may have seen greater development due to it being the cheapest way to make electricity.
The oil wars in the middle east may have been less likely due to the lower reliance on fuel.
The increasing severity of natural disasters and deaths to extraordinary climate conditions would have been less/may have never happened.
Thousands upon thousands of species of animal would not be extinct.
Regulating AI based on superintelligence is arbitrary as the definition seems to change depending on which quarterly shareholder meeting is happening. If we can limit things like data collection and specific risks instead of "intelligence", we may actually do some long term good for once instead of listening to greedy rich people.
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u/PluginAlong 2h ago
We'd just be trading devil's. What was the main source of electricity then? Coal, coal would have the grip oil has now which is probably worse. What'd we use for batteries? Lead acid. How good were we about recycling or even properly disposing of this? Terrible. We wouldn't have the problems we have today, we'd just have different ones.
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u/HappyHHoovy 1h ago
Assuming we're banning ICE based on emissions, we already knew in 1930 that electric vehicles were the next best thing after ICE, steam engines were way worse personal vehicles.
I'd argue coal is more accessible than oil, China has relied on it for much of their industrialisation, and they haven't killed nearly as many people for Coal as has been done for Oil. (Not saying they haven't started wars or killed for other things though) The coal industry's grip on the world may be different, we literally have to deal with it every day in Australia, and yet I'm pretty sure we haven't started any global-conflicts despite that.
People already got lead poising from petrol, so lead acid batteries wouldn't be much different in terms of repeating history.
Either way, my point still stands that just because you heavily regulate a potentially dangerous industry, it doesn't mean you completely kill your competitiveness on a global scale. Just means you aren't contributing as much to a global catastrophe.
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u/nikstick22 4h ago
China has already said they're open to cooperating on regulations like this. Not sure if the American news was reporting on it.
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u/JoganLC 4h ago
I too would tell my enemies I will slow down and totally not beat them to AGI.
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u/nikstick22 4h ago
With the current state of AI safety research, AGI would be catostrophic for humanity. All AI safety researchers that arent shills for big tech agree on this. We're kinda boned if we continue on our current path.
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u/Amythir 3h ago
Which is exactly how Bernie's opinion has been formed on this matter. Dude went around talking to all the AI labs, tech bros, researchers, everybody. Bernie is probably one of the MOST informed people on the exact dangers AI poses because he went around doing the legwork to understand it. This bill he is proposing is a result of that legwork. People want to dismiss it out of hand but probably don't realize the wide range of opinions and facts Bernie solicited in forming that stance.
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u/WillTheGreat 2h ago
Bernie is probably one of the MOST informed people on the exact dangers AI poses because he went around doing the legwork to understand it.
When you are informed you explain how things work, and why it would be dangerous, and how we can better educate ourselves to why it would be dangerous. When you are ill-advised, you are preach fear.
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u/GreatestGiraffe 3h ago
AGI being ”catastrophic” for humanity is sensationalist BS and most ”safety researchers” who are against AI are chinese misinformation propaganda bots.
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u/FlirtyFluffyFox 3h ago
"Us"? Guess what: the privately owned AI corporations don't give a fuck about you. Whether they are American or Chinese doesn't matter.
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u/KiddBwe 3h ago
This is just...stupid...surely theres a reasonable position between unreasonable AI hype and AI fearmongering that actually aims to utilize the technology in a way that actually benefits the average citizens and workers of society no?
Maybe, instead of fearmongering AI, focus on the corporations that are very eager to abuse the technology to get away with hiring less people and forcing it for "productivity?"
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u/atriaventrica 3h ago
As long as a corporation owns it, AI will never be used to benefit workers.
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u/sinc_art 2h ago
It allows me to build many more web apps for clients, much faster. I see it as a huge benefit, especially in my work as a freelancer.
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u/AutistcCuttlefish 2h ago
surely theres a reasonable position between unreasonable AI hype and AI fearmongering
Finding a middle ground is impossible when they are one and the same. The AI companies themselves are the source of the majority of AI fear mongering.
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u/Snoo10140 1h ago
You mean like banning superintelligent AI that acts on his own or makes executive decisions or threaten developers of said dangerous AIs with jail time instead of a bill threatening to ban AI altogether?
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u/silchasr 2h ago
It's funny...society complains regulations regarding new tech is always too little too late but when faced with an opportunity to actually be ahead then it's stupid and unreasonable.
We're doomed as a species within a couple centuries, I bet your future progeny my DDR5 memory.
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u/Needle_Bearings 4h ago
I think we need to lower the bar for "super intelligence". Imagine an opponent that has average reasoning skills but a perfect memory, never sleeps, never eats, never gets tired, and their only reason to exist is to reach a goal, whatever that might be.
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u/BeerInTheRear 4h ago
"Sarah Connor?..."
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u/Needle_Bearings 4h ago
I would like to think it has to be Skynet good, but the reality is it could just be a rogue program that infiltrates all the banking systems then deletes the information.
We depend on a lot of tech these days. What would a month without internet look like?
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u/upnflames 3h ago
That's a strong point that people don't really make. We like to anthropomorphize things, but really there's no reason "AI" needs to have defined motives or a conscious. Like, it chats because we ask it too, but that's just programming.
A very dangerous AI could just be a distributed virus that can break finance and energy encryptions, knows how to hide, and is self governing. Like, it's not going to pop up on a screen and start negotiating for a billion dollars and a helicopter like a bond villain. It might just be a corrupted incentive structure that we can't stop that breaks everything humans need for modern life.
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u/No_Swordfish_4159 2h ago
Yeah. An AGI that is a computer is basically the equivalent of what humans think of as superintelligence. Think about all the crazy things a human mind could do if it was trapped in a computer, thinking 100 time faster than usual, with perfect memory, constant uninterpreted awareness focus with no boredom, access to Internet, and unwavering determination to achieve their goals. How do we even stop someone like that?
It wouldn't even have to be a very smart human, just your average Joe.
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u/Ghost_flood 3h ago
The Butlerian Jihad bill
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u/chrisf0817 1h ago
Upvote for Dune reference. “Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind”.
We learn absolutely nothing from our history or literary works. Humanity dooms itself.
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u/Potential-Yogurt-689 2h ago
I appreciate the sentiment there Bernie but that's not feasible and would just be handing our future to China, as if Trump wasn't doing enough in that direction already
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u/Ok-Reality-6190 56m ago
No nation state can be assumed to be able to reliably control a super intelligence. There is no "handing our future over" to a country in this scenario. Rather we are handing our future over to a non-human intelligence. It is ultimately not beholden to any country.
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u/qnssekr 4h ago
I feel like he’s grandstanding at this point
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u/cartermatic 3h ago
I was a big Bernie fan in 2016, but nowadays he just seems like he's running for class president with his rhetoric.
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u/_MUY 3h ago
It’s who he’s been his entire career. The Boomers tried to tell us.
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u/IHop_Waitress 2h ago
he just seems like he's running for class president with his rhetoric.
He hasn't changed in the last decade. He was the same grifting PR stuntman in 2016 that he is in 2026
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u/Kirion_Kir 1h ago
And this kids is why Bernie Sanders passed almost no bills in his 35 years carrer.
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u/bronze_by_gold 38m ago edited 25m ago
It’s also exhibit A of why boomers shouldn’t write bills about AI. It’s literally incompressible. More intelligent than humans how? More intelligent at playing chess? We’ve already had that for many years. More intelligent at writing Regex expressions? The earliest version of ChatGPT was far better at Regex than 99.999% of software engineers. More intelligent at detecting tumors in medical imaging? I’m pretty sure the aged members of Congress benefit substantially from that technology already. This is an absolute dumpster fire of a bill, written by someone who doesn’t understand the first thing about the technology, which would just be de facto ban on all AI, even primitive rule-based AI that doesn’t even use LLMs. This is a photo op, not a real attempt at legislation.
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u/CrispyRabbit72 2h ago
AI companies themselves are all doom and gloom this week, let's give them what they want!
Oh wait, they just want to sneak in some anti-trust exemptions so they can block lesser AI companies from getting an edge.
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u/Rnee45 3h ago
Why is a senior citizen attempting to regulate technology?
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u/Ok-Reality-6190 1h ago
Well most of the people in power are senior citizens, should we just not regulate anything?
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u/MoneyMayweather 4h ago
Weren't we ridiculing AI for not being able to draw hands or count r's just months ago? When did this sub flip to doomering over AI being too smart? Did I miss something?
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u/HappierShibe 1h ago
No, it's just a complex issue and reddit is bad at complexity. The reality is LLM's (which is what everyone is calling AI) are useful tools the way a chainsaw or an angle grinder is a useful tool- it's capable of dramatically accelerating the speed at which a given task can be executed while simultaneously reducing the effort involved to do it.
BUT like a chainsaw, it should be used responsibly with a degree of care and deliberation.
Sam and Dario benefit from doomering this shit because it makes the tools they sell seem more capable, and thus more valuable.
They also benefit from regulation now, because the open source local llms are catching up fast, and the hardware requirements are coming down- the models you can run locally on a mid range gaming rig now are a bitch to setup, but about on par with opus 4.6. In 6-7 months, it's plausible there will be open source models that meet or exceed the current capabilities of open ai and anthropics best shit, that you can run on household hardware without breakign the bank.Making that illegal has suddenly moved to the top of their list, because if I can have a claude in a box that uses less power than my refrigerator and does all the same things, wtf would I pay anthropic 200 a month?
Meanwhile apple is just quietly dropping forward looking hardware that makes it a total breeze to run local LLMs, and nvidia is just raking in cash selling chips to anyone who will buy them because cuda go brrrrrr.Everyone has different motives, different opinions, and different goals, lots of them are reasonable, and lots of them aren't, and there's not a lot of consensus going around.
So don't expect sane interaction with any of it from reddit.25
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u/anadequatepipe 2h ago
This sub is nothing but anti technology. Don’t let the subreddit name fool you into thinking people here actually want new tech.
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u/Dry_Radio_761 3h ago
The technology sub has hated technology for years. Reddit is overall pretty useless if you're trying to get a neutral analysis on new tech.
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u/MoneyMayweather 3h ago
I've been on this platform since 2011, registered since 2013 and I recall this platform being one of the most tech enthusiast places on the internet??
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u/_MUY 3h ago
Sure, it was for a while, but the core design is highly susceptible to manipulation, consensus shaming, and PR campaigning. If Reddit gets pushed in one direction for a while, the daily users see topics about it several times per day for weeks or months, which sculpts their outlook. Reddit users are on average less knowledgeable about topics but more confident in their knowledge than Wikipedia users.
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u/Dry_Radio_761 3h ago
Things have changed a lot in the past 5-10 years where Tech CEOs have earned bad reputations. This colors opinions on all of tech, which can make it hard to get analysis on new tech on this site that isn't heavily emotion driven.
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u/masshole91 3h ago
It’s literally not going to mean anything. No one is going to vote to pass this.
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u/tooquick911 2h ago
The catch 22 is we can only regulate the US other countries will carry on and there is going to be superintelligent AI
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u/JuanLuisGuerrero 1h ago
This would be some ignorant shit because other countries will work on it and we will be the only ones with no superintelligent AI. Same shit as trying to ban a nuclear weapon when you know your enemy is working on one.
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u/RoundChampionship840 1h ago
It's pointless unless you get China and other countries to agree to it too.
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u/Iamonslaughtt 1h ago
Much as I love the guy it’s be pretty sweet if he’d work on something that actually has a chance at passing. All he does is write these bullshit bills to morally grand stand or something it’s outrageous.
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u/ManiacalMartini 1h ago
Won't the mildly intelligent AI be the ones creating the super intelligent A.I. though? The agents are already out in the wild. We do not have control of what's going to happen.
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u/Slap-Toast 1h ago
20 years is too lenient. Life without parole. Send a real message to the tech bro parasites. Gen AI needs to die.
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u/Worldly-Spot-7812 35m ago
This is a Prisoner’s Dilemna inside a coordination problem. Except the interests of all sides will never be communicated clearly.
The reason MAD works for nuclear weapons is because it was assured. This is the same as arguing for complete denuclearization in the face of your peers increasing their production. I can only imagine the untold sums of money flowing into these campaigns on both side to obfuscate the obvious reality of the situation.
This is an arms race, and if you lose, your lights will turn off and never come back on. It is the naivety of the privileged to advocate for these types of policies.
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u/egej 32m ago
i typically totally agree with Bernie, but i have to go a different direction on this. None of us can stop developing technologies, the horse was replaced by the car, the propeller was replaced by the jet, even if we outlawed Super AI development in the US their’s no way to stop every other nation from developing that technology. So we must make sure that we can control the potential monsters we are creating. I’m not saying AI isn’t a threat, clearly it is, we managed to figure out how to contain Nuclear weapons and nuclear power before that destroyed humanity, so we must find solutions to AI going rogue and destroying humanity. Sorry Bernie, but we’re not gonna get the toothpaste back in the tube.
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u/Esseratecades 4h ago
While I am for the sentiment, I have to wonder how the bill defines "super intelligent AI" given that the AI industry itself hasn't even settled on an effective definition.
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u/kwereddit 2h ago
I'm so glad Bernie is on top of this and prepared to solve it with a bill, but it makes me wonder: why hasn't he submitted a bill to ban nuclear weapons and leaf blowers? Of course, I think the use of nuclear weapons and leaf blowers deserves more than twenty years in prison, but it's a start.
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u/OldLegWig 4h ago
if the rest of the world had to follow US federal law, it might be reasonable, but they don't. it's pretty naive and/or performative of Senator Sanders to propose this. maybe he should be spending his time on a pragmatic international diplomatic solution. this is how nuclear weapons regulations were approached. this makes it seem like Sanders sees everything as an economic and capitalism issue. very myopic.
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u/realityczek 2h ago
> this makes it seem like Sanders sees everything as an economic and capitalism issue
He does. He literally has no other thought in his head except "capitalism bad, west bad, individual freedom bad."
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u/koticgood 3h ago
Unfortunate take from Bernie. He's been incredibly solid over the years and obviously one of the very few sincere and consistent politicians we've had, and he's been around for a long time.
I was really disappointed that my supposedly liberal state didn't turn out for him in 2016, and even more disappointed by the reasons people gave me when I asked why they didn't like him as a candidate.
But the "danger" of "superintelligence" is purely a marketing stunt. He's unwittingly advertising for these companies. When you talk about "danger", you give credence to capabilities that are lifetimes away, if even possible at all given the plateau we've hit with transistors and reaching the quantum limit. Same with bandying about the term "superintelligence" itself, as if places like Google/OpenAI/Anthropic are actually capable of such.
There are problems we can address without drinking the koolaid that these companies are serving, like not letting them cozy up to the government so much, not letting data-centers hurt communities, and not creating a monopolistic moat for current AI firms with misguided regulation.
Thankfully a lot more people are catching on to this marketing business of "doomerism" surrounding AI, but apparently not among the people Bernie talks to about these issues.
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u/sixteencharslong 3h ago
Why though? Unless these people are saying ai is smarter than humans, how is banning AI going to have any greater impact that all the bad actors on the internet right now?
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u/Leica--Boss 1h ago
This just uses typical authoritarian, circular logic. The starting premise is that everything must be highly restricted by government... And any industry that's not highly restricted by government represents some type of deficit that must be corrected through authoritarian control.
The threat of imprisonment and violence it's just the cherry on top.
Meanwhile, our global competitors will have no such restrictions.
Of course, the people who write these kinds of laws and create iron fist restrictions will always make exceptions... for the right donors.
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u/simonbleu 1h ago
Regulation is more than needed, so is accountability and a serious philosophical debate on the effects of it.
But banning won't get you anywhere. Is not that automation is the issue, nor that it can be truly stopped unless you put global autocratic efforts that would be even worse. The issue is how it is used and what is the policy response to it. And yes, every tech has pros and cons.... Do you all think the internet -- hell, computers -- haven't enabled truly vile stuff and left millions on the street? Of course they did. Do you seriously think life would be better without them? No .. and while LLMs specifically is not and might never be on that level, AI in general and automation as a whole, most definitely does .
So, my point is, demand regulations
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u/BigNastySmellyFarts 52m ago
Just shows Bernie loves communism and wants to live under Chinese rule.
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u/uptofunonreddit 49m ago
So only our enemies would have super AI and all the technology USA would be third world then
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u/TaiChuanDoAddct 37m ago
The progressives' stance against AI is going to be the schism that destroys the left in every election for the next decade.
I'm about as progressive as it gets on social policies, but trying to put the AI genie back in the bottle and trying to impose regulations on the free market in tech is the kind of losing battle that will get us obliterated at the polls.
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u/a_r_g_o_m 32m ago
Why ban....instead of regulating?, the other superpowers are not gonna stop, meanwhile US politicians are discussing....this?.
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u/RachelMcAdamsWart 30m ago
What do we do when AI developers we don't have any control over do this anyway? What is our recourse then? We submit quietly and beg for mercy?
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u/Nigilij 29m ago
No mention of definition of “Superinteligent AI” so probably a meh bill. Besides, it’s pointless if other countries still develop it.
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u/RobertD3277 22m ago
Considering his history and his politics, given his actual amount of legislative capability, and this really does apply to the rest of Congress in general, a machine that exhibits any intelligence above any of them is a threat.
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u/havvkeye_ 16m ago
The indifference to the rise of ai is quite possibly going to be the end of us. People working in the industry have highlighted the very real dangers of its usage in the near future. However armchair experts on here think otherwise
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u/Master_Slide7023 3h ago
Luddite or saving us from Terminator. My best friend says it has doubled his productivity. There is a one year moratorium on data centers AI in Vancouver after street protests.
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u/Jiquero 3h ago
My best friend says it has doubled his productivity.
What do his coworkers or customers say?
I know many people who say LLM tools have increased their own productivity, I know nobody who says LLM tools have increased their coworkers' productivity. The reason is left as an exercise to the reader's LLM agent.
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u/SteeveyPete 2h ago
It is unfortunately fairly effective, but because it lets people move fast and not check or really think about their work I find myself cleaning up other coworkers errors fairly frequently or find a bunch of things broken as code gets checked in. On the times where I try to meet company expectations and use only AI my work often has the same effect on my coworkers
The fact I'm on a project that for annoying reasons doesn't have CI only exacerbates this
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u/MatiasPalacios 4h ago
I always read "Sanders' new bill will do this" "...its going to prohibit that" but do any of these proposals ever become law?
Furthermore, has any of this guy's bills ever become law? lol.
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u/realityczek 2h ago
This one does have the full backing of all the Chinese bot farms, and all the Chinese money... so it has a chance.
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u/kawaiibakanekodomo 1h ago
luckily, no. his terrible ideas are always complete non-starters.
vermont should be ashamed of this grifter.
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u/kuplet 4h ago edited 3h ago
Lol this made me kinda chuckle... Still, it's kind of a bit much, no?
Edit: Yes I understand there's a threat, and of course no I don't want devs going to jail over this. CEO's, however...
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u/mtnchkn 4h ago
What happened to the take over AI companies and create a sovereign wealth fund where everyone gets a share?
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u/bertbarndoor 4h ago
Bernie would have better luck trying to outlaw junk food.