Sanders introduces bill to ban artificial superintelligence and pause AI

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Bill summary: https://www.sanders.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/Ban-Artifi... https://x.com/BernieSanders/status/2095542398084415952 “We need an immediate PAUSE on advanced AI development, and a permanent BAN on superintelligence — an artificial mind smarter than any human, capable of operating independently beyond our control. Countries around the world must work together to prevent this nightmare scenario. That is why today I am announcing new legislation to do just that.”

bigyabai

Something gives me the feeling that Sanders and Chomsky were both put on this earth to manufacture liberal hysteria towards AI. It's a good thing that we discredited Chomsky before we knew about his Epstein connections, and I'm inclined to ignore Sanders' armchair fearmongering in the same vein too. It's artificial and bizarre, and a fear that I cannot empathize with given what we know and see from LLMs.

ronsor

"Congress shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of speech" We've been down this road before with cryptography. No, it's not going to work.

slibhb

In my view, AI is our best shot at a post-scarcity society where massive redistribution has no/few downsides. If all labor is done by AIs then the price of everything will go to near zero and everyone can have a government mandated middle class lifestyle. Therefore I find it ironic that leftists oppose AI progress.

52ahf

That is very rational. Finally some politicians realize that there can be AI treaties with Russia and China similar to the INF treaty (banned medium range nuclear missiles). The INF treaty worked from 1987 until Trump tore it up in 2019.

hgoel

If we're banning superintelligence, we might as well ban genies from granting wishes and aliens from outside the solar system from establishing residence on Earth.

Legend2440

If people like him their way, we'd still be farming with shovels and weaving our clothes by hand. Banning automation is shortsighted and stupid; you refuse to let people increase the size of the pie because you're worried it'll make your fraction smaller. But a smaller fraction of a bigger pie is still a bigger piece.

hackingonempty

In the USA, thousands of people are killed every year by car drivers. This is tolerated without a peep, relatively speaking, even though 20 times as many pedestrians are killed by drivers as are killed by mass shootings that dominate the news and voter issues. So I predict the number of people we will tolerate being killed every year to have good AI will be more than zero, much more.

dang

Proposed bills rarely amount to anything in the end, so it's generally better to wait for a more substantial story. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

josh_p

Sure, whatever.. If Sanders were actually serious about trying to make the world a better place, he'd be more vocal about impeaching Trump and support Congress' efforts to do so. I get it, AI's an easy target.

ethbr1

Never has "old man yells at cloud" been so literally appropriate. https://knowyourmeme.com/sensitive/memes/old-man-yells-at-cl... (Don't get me wrong, I agree with the guy on many, many points. But attempting to ban development of something with so much money riding on it is laughably naive)

RickJWagner

How is this supposed to stop development outside of the US? If AI turns evil, it will probably not discriminate on which countries to destroy. So Sanders kneecapping the USA won’t slow China, which could result in global destruction anyway. Without global agreement ( and intrusive monitoring ), it doesn’t seem useful.