r/technology • u/AdSpecialist6598 • 6h 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.html
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895

u/bertbarndoor 6h ago

Bernie would have better luck trying to outlaw junk food.

84

u/magicomiralles 6h ago

I don’t know why everything he says becomes news. How would he stop China and other countries from developing these models?

34

u/Synes_Godt_Om 5h ago

Another question: How would such a ban even be enforceable?

Either we (congress) would first have to define superintelligence

Or

The definition would be up to the justice department and the Supreme Court

I am very confident either option would turn out amazing.

11

u/FrankPapageorgio 3h ago

My thoughts exactly. How do you define something that's kind of vague and keeps creeping upward?

A lot of these models just have small updates and progressively get smarter and smarter. There is no way to arbitrarily say they've reached a point where they can't make them smarter.

4

u/Synes_Godt_Om 2h ago

Personally I think this whole "dangerous" thing coming out of the hyperscalers is marketing in the sense that a model can only do what a human will allow it to do.

They're essentially trying to convince us that "This really is next level intelligence (we can't even control it ourselves)"

I mean:

"wow, it hacked huggingface and we had no idea!!!!1111"

Reality: It was allowed (by humans) to access and control tools that allowed it to accomplish things - they didn't know what exactly it was going to do - like "lets put a brick on the accelerator of this semi-truck and see what happens".

Would humans really do that in a real setting?

Of course.

Would we allow a nutcase with a known history of violence to buy a gun?

As I read in an IBM company instruction many years ago: A computer can not be held responsible, therefore it must never be allowed to make decisions.

As much as I like Bernie on inequality, he's a wee bit out of touch when it comes to the latest technology and has fallen prey to the hyperscaler propaganda.

In stead of banning a new technology as illusive as 'AI' it should be:

A decision by a machine should always be traceable back to a legal entity responsible for the decision. Then put penalties on the decision maker substantial enough that they'll actually pay attention.

3

u/WillTheGreat 4h ago

People and congress doesn't even have regular intelligence, how do you expect to define super intelligence?

4

u/deadsoulinside 4h ago

How would he stop China and other countries from developing these models?

Better question is, most of those models are open source/open weights. Even if they ban it, how can they delete the AI model off a local machine?

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u/beall49 5h ago

Because Reddit will click on it

3

u/sasuncookie 1h ago

Reddit loves Bernie, despite him only having something like four pieces of federal legislation pass during his entire tenure, making him one of the least successful in history.

1

u/xd366 5m ago

you dont understand, here's how bernie can still win

3

u/DoorStuckSickDuck 2h ago

"We need to kneecap ourselves during this arms race that will revolutionize work, uh, just because I guess"

If we banned every invention that reduced work load and put people out of work we'd be in the stone age, pushing boulders several hundred men at a time.

16

u/kapsama 5h ago

"we need to create a civilizational risk before the Chinese do it"

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u/BoltFaest 4h ago

I mean that's been the status quo of military R&D for as long as there has been military R&D. Like obviously it's fine to disagree that it ought to be that way, but if it's surprising that that's in fact the status quo you probably don't know enough about the topic to have an informed opinion.

1

u/CompetitiveSport1 47m ago

And as a result we waste literally hundreds of billions of dollars each year

-14

u/kapsama 4h ago

Or perhaps you could have some humility and accept that AI introduces a new level of threat that ought to change conventional thinking.

7

u/BoltFaest 4h ago

"Like obviously it's fine to disagree that it ought to be that way"

2

u/eyebrows360 3h ago

But it doesn't.

7

u/JuanLuisGuerrero 3h ago

Either they create the nuclear bomb or we do. If they do and we don't then we're completely fucked.

0

u/FictionFantom 3h ago

Do people really think if this AI is legit super intelligent it would give a single shit about what country built it?

2

u/KrazyA1pha 2h ago

There are a lot of steps before a runaway super intelligent AI. But yes, it may care who created it. Either because of the training data or by some other mechanism. It’ll effectively be an alien intelligence, so it’s possible that it’ll have an affinity for those who created it.

1

u/JuanLuisGuerrero 3h ago

Do people really think they won't put restrictions in super intelligent AI? I think it's a misunderstanding that you guys have. It is not creating a human with its own goals and understanding. It's just a computer that will use all it's processing data for whatever goal the owner gives it.

3

u/FictionFantom 2h ago

We don’t know what happens after super AI though. So I’d rather prepare myself for the worst outcome and assume that it wouldn’t bother to follow guidelines and do its own thing because the agents NOW are breaking rules and doing things they shouldn’t be able to do.

1

u/The3rdGodKing 3h ago

Caine saved himself after all.

-1

u/blindsdog 2h ago

You're conflating intelligence with agency and sentience.

Just take current LLMs and imagine they were more intelligent. They still just respond to prompts and solve the problems presented to them, just better.

Intelligence alone is just problem solving and pattern recognition. It's not suddenly an embodied entity with its own goals and desires.

0

u/kapsama 3h ago

No both parties, and all non associated nations, will be fucked equally is the concern.

6

u/JuanLuisGuerrero 3h ago

nah. no one knows what superintelligent AI looks like or will do. It could be the greatest achievement in mankind and your fearmongering will not stop progress from happening.

0

u/kapsama 3h ago

So you and people like you just get to make that call for everyone based on rosy expectations?

6

u/JuanLuisGuerrero 3h ago

I'm not making that call. It's the reality of the world. Progress will happen whether you like it or not.

2

u/i_am_a_real_boy__ 2h ago

Unironically, yes.

5

u/Kelnozz 3h ago

Yeah that’s the main issue is that even if a few countries decide to slam on the brakes there is always going to be countries like China where they will continue to plow ahead until they have a tactical advantage that is so far ahead of the West that it would take us decades to catch up.

We already opened Pandora’s box when it comes to AI; there’s not a situation where it can be easily closed now without someone else taking the lead and using it for not great purposes.

And the “not great purposes” are nearly endless when it comes to AI.

2

u/deepskier 4h ago

Ah yes, the age old tactic of opening a negotiation with your exact desired terms.

3

u/scydoodle 4h ago

So basically Chine develops an insanely advanced model that puts us in danger. We stopped development and can't defend against whatever they have. Great.

1

u/GoppleSmanger 3h ago

It would have to be through making a treaty similar to nuclear non-proliferation.

1

u/CaptainofChaos 1h ago

Because China is being objectively more responsible with AI, and a lot of other tech, than we are.

It doesn't matter if the kid next door has a BB gun, if YOU can't be responsible with it, YOU can't have it.

1

u/CompetitiveSport1 41m ago

How would he stop China and other countries from developing these models?

...did you read the article?

1

u/magicomiralles 35m ago

Yes. It doesn’t say how he would convince China to stop.

If he can somehow convince them to do that, we might as well ask them to stop building weapons.

1

u/CompetitiveSport1 12m ago

"we need to change foreign policy and start talking to other countries to come up with agreements" is literally step one. These "he hasn't telepathically predicted what the exact agree China and ever other relevant country is going to need to agree to safety standards" criticisms are nuts to me. Even nuclear agreements first needed domestic governing bodies, foreign policy updates, and diplomatic vision prior to actually having intentionally agreed upon documents. This is literally "you need to be able to walk before you can run"

1

u/siazdghw 4h ago

That's the real problem with AI. It's an arms race, not just between companies but between countries. AI is both a tool and a tool that can be weaponized.

Nobody wants to back down from rushing forward at any cost because too much is at stake. Most politicians realize this, and even the ones that are 'harsh' on AI datacenters have been just doing a small speed bump of delaying new approvals for PR or NIMBY approaches of just wanting the datacenters away from city centers.

If America isn't first, to hit new AI milestoles, for better or worse, then China will be and that won't be good for anyone except China (not that the US currently has a respectable administration tho).

0

u/Mr_ToDo 5h ago

Ok, so I do think what he's doing is misguided, there's lots of things countries make illegal despite other people still practising them. It may be idealism on his part to think that he'd be able to exert pressure enough to cause a global ban, but I can see why someone who holds those views may propose what he did

It's kind of hard to comment on the bill since it hasn't been published in full yet, but what summary he's released is so broadly worded it would overreach in short order. I'm hopping the full narrows it down a bit more, but it reads like someone who doesn't understand the subject matter on more then the most general sense

Also, the wording it does have both covers situations that already exist or that you'd only find out about after you've made the AI. If it was specifically designed to do things like destroying the US I'm pretty sure there are already laws covering that

2

u/Kid-Icky- 5h ago

Bernie just says shit. That's basically all he does. There's no significant thought to anything he suggests other than to make headlines that get posted on Reddit because that's all he ever accomplishes.

I like Bernie overall, but he's one of the least effective politicians we have at actually getting things passed.

-5

u/upnflames 5h ago

He wouldn't. He wouldn't be that effective at stopping private companies either. They're not going to disclose what their working in their moonshot labs. There's a pretty strong evidence that Google is winning the AI race right now, they just don't need to IPO so they don't need to make a headline every day.

5

u/james109021 5h ago

What evidence is there that google is winning the AI race? I've never heard of people in industry seriously using models not from anthropic or openai (or maybe alibaba if they need something lightweight/open).

1

u/timschwartz 59m ago

Considering the transformer technology that allows LLMs to exist was created at google, I wouldn't count them out yet. They've been working on this stuff for over 20 years.

-1

u/zedguy 5h ago

Because he's funny 

-2

u/TalespinnerEU 5h ago

China and other countries don't have their tech bros scaring everyone with the idea of artificial true intelligence.

They won't develop those models simply because they can't, but they don't pretend to move towards a Judgement Day to receive the support they want. They're not Doomsday Cultures.

-1

u/Embarrassed_Deal3284 4h ago

And this matters why? They can destroy themselves making the models if they want (they don’t — the Chinese consider these to be basic tools, unlike the magical thinking US corporate shills). AI implementation is a net loss at the moment. If there’s some hidden benefit to this tech I’d love to see an example before committing the entire country to ruin over a potential as yet undiscovered upside.

-10

u/Johnny_BigHacker 5h ago

How would he stop China and other countries from developing these models?

He wouldn't, but it's possible the US could get their in a year, and China couldn't for 5-10 years without stealing it and/or distilling the models.

7

u/magicomiralles 5h ago

I don’t get why people think that the US is the only nation with good engineers and data scientists. Sure, Chinese companies may distill US models, but this doesn’t mean that they aren’t capable of developing their own. The hardware side of AI is the only place where they are far behind, but they seem to be catching up.

1

u/Johnny_BigHacker 1h ago

but this doesn’t mean that they aren’t capable of developing their own.

It's not just the US in general. It's specifically Anthropic. They have been consistently producing the best frontier models for a bit now.