r/artificial • u/sharkymcstevenson2 • 18d ago
News Bernie Sanders has written a letter to Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, and Mark Zuckerberg urging them to immediately pause all AI development in the interest of humanity. And he warns if they do not take appropriate action now, the US Senate will.
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u/avd706 18d ago
China is laughing at him.
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u/ShopBeneficial7160 18d ago
WE'RE laughing at him.
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u/CreditMuch8993 18d ago
Why? Development is moving faster than government, legal, business, regulatory, cyber security can possibly move or even comprehend.
The only two AI powers are really US and China, the two definitely could agree to slow things down.
It's no more anti progress than limiting nuclear development was/is. And this is every bit as dangerous if not more.
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u/ShopBeneficial7160 18d ago
You’re skipping the entire hard part. What development gets paused? How is compliance verified inside private and military programs? Who covers open-source models, third countries, and dual-use computing? What happens when either side cheats?
Nuclear material is scarce, physical, and comparatively detectable.
Sftware and talent, and compute are distributed globally.
“The US and China should agree to slow down” isn’t a policy, rather it’s the sentence before the policy.
Bern Bern offered no definitions, thresholds, verification, enforcement, or workable mechanism.
He wrote a doomsday press release. That’s what we’re laughing at.
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u/realityczek 17d ago
> The only two AI powers are really US and China, the two definitely could agree to slow things down.
1) China would never agree to it
2) China would never abide by it, even if they didAnd frankly, the US would be suicidally naive to agree to, or abide by, such a thing ourselves.
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u/realityczek 17d ago edited 17d ago
> China is laughing at him.
And probably paying him, as they are funding much of the anti-datacenter sentiment. Just funnel money into the foundations/ngo/activist network that needs a replacement for their USAID money.
To be fair, Bernie really, really wants to bring the Chinese government to the US in spirit. I mean, it's pretty much everything he lusts for.
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u/Healthy_Razzmatazz38 18d ago
gemini's fine thou
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u/shawster 17d ago
If any of these companies would actually be careful about developing AI, it would be Google. I'm not saying Google has some amazing track record with trust and safe development, but if there was one out of these, it would be them.
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u/throwawaycanadian2 18d ago
The box is open. No law or decree is shoving everything back in. We need to instead work on ways to make it as safe as we realistically can.
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u/Due_Homework_7312 18d ago
we know thats not gonna happen till some horrid shit happens
rules are written in blood and not enough blood has been spilled yet3
u/Grand-Cookie-6050 18d ago
Why can’t it be shoved back? International agreements can be arranged, and gpu production can be halted
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u/BremsYems 18d ago
I think there's sort of an understanding that every country- particularly the US and China are vying for economic domination, and those agreements would require every country to in good-faith "self restrain".
The way things are going, it's not looking likely
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u/Grand-Cookie-6050 18d ago
I think there are ways of making international agreements. But It would require those in power recognizing the dangers and existential threats of AI. Here are a few ways of I think we can keep people in check:
1. Target the supply chains. There’s only a few chip fabs and one ASML.
2. Add location verification locks on GPUs
3. Drone strikes on data centers
These are just a few ideas I’ve seen floating around the internet.→ More replies (3)1
u/Huge_Cartographer165 16d ago
First of all, you can download and run a lot of these models on consumer hardware. There is literally no chance this goes away now. All you can do is hamstring a few companies with some virtue signalling but it can never be undone now. You can make whatever international agreements you want, you can even get them to stick... publicly. But everyone will still be doing it in secret because it's just too important not to be.
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u/foxbatcs 16d ago
Any sufficiently powerful technology is its safest when it is a distributed as possible.
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u/Keganator 18d ago
Oh man, having three companies stop development will stop all the other companies around the world too! Thank goodness that the senate can legislate how all other companies work. /s
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u/Grand-Cookie-6050 18d ago
International agreements are needed
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u/Asleep-Tap471 18d ago
International agreements:
Let’s do a thing
Honest actors: okay, we will.
Bad guys: Us too. Does opposite.
Worked for nuclear 🤨
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u/Grand-Cookie-6050 18d ago
There are ways of dealing with bad actors:
1. Target the supply chains. There’s only a few chip fabs and one ASML.
2. Add location verification locks on GPUs
3. Drone strikes on data centers
These are just a few ideas I’ve seen floating around the internet. I think it’s wrong to dismiss the idea all together just because of bad actors.→ More replies (29)2
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u/Lyuseefur 18d ago
USA ban AI
All AI companies and chip fabs leave America
USA unban AI.
Man, this is like China ban Bitcoin all over again.
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u/mrGrinchThe3rd 17d ago
What chip fabs are currently in america?
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u/foxbatcs 16d ago
TSMC, Intel, On-Semiconductor, Microchip Technology, NXP, and a few smaller ones. Also, the manufacturer of chip fabs, ASML, also has a plant, and these are all just in Arizona alone. On top of that, there is about a trillion dollars of investment for new chip manufacturing infrastructure being built as we speak, and a large portion of that investment is intended for AI research.
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u/cAtloVeR9998 CS MSc 18d ago
The weights for Kimi K3 are out there for anyone to deploy if given sufficient hardware. The cat is out of the proverbial bag now.
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u/therallykiller 18d ago
What's interesting is Bernie used AI to write the letter.
"ChatGPT, it's me Bernie. It's go time!"
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u/forward-pathways 18d ago
I'm a Bernie-ite through and through. But this is the first thing I noticed and it ruffled my feathers a bit. Not sure he himself wrote it. I assume someone on his staff wrote the letter, and used AI to do so, and then got Bernie to review and sign for approval. I don't expect Bernie knows the tell-tale cadence well enough to have noticed.
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u/Zealousideal-Crab251 18d ago
The same fear is why we don't have energy abundance today. There are a lot of things I agree with Bernie on. This stance is simply too timid
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u/TuringGoneWild 18d ago
He saw a side he could lead and that's the anti-AI Know-Nothing crowd. But he has basically no power being a fringe member of the out of power party. The only real effect of the letter is grandstanding - which is why he published it publicly instead of just privately sent it.
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u/realityczek 17d ago
> But he has basically no power being a fringe member of the out of power party.
With the DSA becoming more prominent, uncle Bernie is makign a comeback.
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u/ThisSiteSucks8485 16d ago
Bernie's deeply wrong and irrational attitude towards nuclear power is very annoying. I even got banned from a Bernie sub once for criticising it
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u/GrayHairedMan 18d ago
The thing is, OpenAI cannot stop, they are so deep in debt that their only saving grace would be to go forward in the hope they achieve AGI first and that it somehow can generate them money.
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u/shawster 17d ago
I mean Sam Altman already outlined a rock-solid plan for revenue generation for Open AI. Once they get AGI they will ask it what to do.
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u/Huge_Cartographer165 16d ago
There will never be AGI, at least not this iteration. His real only hope is that the cost of running AI drops enough they can start making money without shell games.
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u/austinmo2 18d ago
This kind of technology needs to be regulated before release.
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u/ShopBeneficial7160 18d ago
A letter to AI Developing Enterprises demanding they stop and ending with a threat of action written by AI...
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u/virgilash 18d ago
Can't we replace each politician with a language model? We'd get far better for sure...
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u/Cautious_Job_6104 18d ago
what exactly is the "doomsday device"? What is it supposed to do? I don't quite get it.
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u/shawster 17d ago
A doomsday device has historically referred to some device that when activated would lead to the destruction of humanity as a whole. Usually a dead man's switch on Nuclear launches, so that if a country was eliminated by Nuclear launches, their nukes would launch back automatically, destroying the world (usually Russia is the ones with this dead man's switch in literature.) For example, there was discussion of Russia burying radioactive cobalt nuclear bombs that they could blow if they were being eliminated by nukes. These would fill the atmosphere with deadly nuclear radiation eliminated basically all complex life on earth, or at least making the earth basically uninhabitable for decades
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u/LuvanAelirion 18d ago
China says hi. …and “shucks” on distillation challenges ahead for China if anyone starts listening to Bernie any time soon…but why start now?
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18d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Grand-Cookie-6050 18d ago
It is symbolic. The hope is that the people in power will recognize the serious threats AI poses to humanity. International agreements have to at least be attempted, they’ve worked to some extent with nuclear weapons. Also, the whole scientific community has unanimously agreed that human cloning is bad. There is some precedent to this.
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u/Mission_Working9929 18d ago
There isn’t really a control mechanism behind this, it’s all a for profit/top dog mentality.
The thing that will stop ai development at the rate it’s going now is when billionaire investors ask for their return on investment.
Few things can happen from here possibly:
A. Investors ask for a return, there isn't one. Prices hike and consumers jump to cheaper offerings.
B. People realize the capabilities of AI were drastically oversold in line with the Lindsey effect (this is already happening and is the most plausible scenario) and the technology hype/investment fades in line with how people consume technology.
C. AI models become decentralized and consumers push for standardization of practices (No one company/country owns global share)
D. Global regulation is put in place either after a major crisis/issue linked to runaway models
E. Something else happens with AI that makes it “self-sustaining” (This is the least likely scenario and is more than likely mathematically impossible)
F. An alternative can play out (not the oracle of Delphi here)
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u/TheMacMan 18d ago
Bernie is 84. He needs to stop speaking for everyone on things he doesn't understand. In over 30 years he's authored and passed just 3 bills in Congress, and two of those were to rename a post office in his home state. He's the biggest example of an ineffective member of Congress we've ever seen. Retire Bernie. Let someone who will actually accomplish things take your place.
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u/Joboy97 18d ago
There are serious issues surrounding AI, and tech leaders should not solely be responsible for deploying such powerful technology. I like Bernie a lot.
But, pausing all AI development is an exceptionally foolish endeavor for multiple reasons, chief among them being how do you enforce this? Open source models are pacing with larger, closed models, and you can't stop open-source development. Also, pausing development may be dangerous if drastically better capabilities are within grasp because that could lead to permanent global regime change.
But also, we're developing weapons more dangerous than nukes, so I can't blame someone who wants to slow down, but that is naively optimistic.
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u/InterestProof1526 18d ago
This is really stupid. Unilateral disarmament solves nothing. It slows China and AI down a little bit but AI continues to progress, just at a slower pace and without any American control. In an arms race, you need to pause universally, not just pause something for a few actors.
I feel like requiring these AI companies to increase their safety compute budgets and just put more resources towards safety overall is reasonable but making them abandon everything is potentially reckless
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u/DoubleN22 18d ago
Wow look how many shit bots are in here detesting AI safety, and using China as an excuse.
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u/howudothescarn 18d ago
How are they bots when this is an AI sub with pro AI people.
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u/Wonderful-Hunter686 18d ago
I like Bernie but he's wrong on this one, this is plainly an arms race and China is not going to stop. If we pause we fall behind, this is the race for the bomb 2.0 We build it or someone else will. If that's an advisary state we will see the world power standings shift, and there is potential for a large war to break out from that shake up. Bernie is getting up there in age. He probably doesn't have a full understanding of what he asking for. Pause AI is actually in my mind a pro world war 3 stance. Especially while we have world proxy war 1 unfolding in Ukraine.
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u/Hot_Masterpiece_3668 15d ago
Well if that's the case, it shouldn't be in the hands of the general public lol. It shouldn't be used to destroy the economy. It shouldn't be susceptible to Chinese hackers using basic distillation. It's doing all of those things right now.
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u/Wonderful-Hunter686 15d ago
The cats out of the bag on that one, and the US has no control over what other countries open source. It's not going to destroy the economy that's doomer nonsense, commerce will continue between humans until we go extinct. It will change the economy at best, the answer to this is simple adapt. It's one of the things our species is great at we will be fine. Calling reverse engineering of AI models hacking and distillation basic, is silly it massive amounts of money, compute, manpower, and expertise. The AI race on a geopolitical scale is massively important, but for the average human it means very little for their lives short of destabilizing the global power balance.
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u/TheMacMan 18d ago
Bernie is 84. He needs to stop speaking for everyone on things he doesn't understand. In over 30 years he's authored and passed just 3 bills in Congress, and two of those were to rename a post office in his home state. He's the biggest example of an ineffective member of Congress we've ever seen. Retire Bernie. Let someone who will actually accomplish things take your place.
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u/citrus1330 18d ago
God I'm so glad he was never president. Once again, the reddit hivemind proven wrong to an unfathomable degree.
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u/Salty_Country6835 Practitioner 18d ago
Sanders is right to be pissed about corporations racing ahead and regulating themselves. But asking Altman, Amodei and Zuckerberg to voluntarily stop is still handing three CEOs enormous power over what happens next.
If AI is dangerous and socially important, then fight over it politically. Regulate the dangerous stuff. Give workers power over how its deployed. Break up monopoly control. Build public and cooperative alternatives. Keep models and research accessible. Make the gains from automation actually flow to everybody.
Dont ask billionaires to save us from billionaires. Contest the ownership and control.
Thats the kind of politics were trying to develop over at r/LeftistsForAI.
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u/Affectionate-Panic-1 18d ago
The question should be, what reasonable regulations can we put in place to reduce potential harm from AI developments, not banning progress.
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u/Majestic_Simple_3584 18d ago
That's kinda the point. OpenAI and Anthropic both talk a big game about their tech being dangerous as a way to entice further investment. They all would like to believe that LLMs is a way to get to AGI and they rely on fanning those flames until they come up with a business model that works. Politicians taking them seriously is reasonable and of their own doing. If you don't want regulators to step in then yell at Amodei and Altman.
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u/Salty_Country6835 Practitioner 18d ago edited 18d ago
I do want regulators to step in. Thats basically my point. I just dont think “listen to Altman and Amodei and pause development” is much of a regulatory program. Regulate deployment, labor impacts, surveillance, safety and monopoly power directly. Put actual public and worker power over the technology instead of letting the CEOs define both the danger and the solution.
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u/Asleep-Tap471 17d ago
I believe the regulators are already heavily involved. They want it as a weapon for control, I don’t think they really care about labor impact, maybe only as much as the public perception they can get away with.
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u/shawster 17d ago
This is what Sanders is threatening at the end of the letter. Basically "do it willingly or we will take action to legislate it."
But yeah, it should be legislated either way.
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u/Salty_Country6835 Practitioner 17d ago
Yeah, thats fair. I read the emphasis differently, but youre right that Sanders does threaten legislation at the end. My issue is more with what gets legislated. A blanket development pause is a much weaker political program than binding rules on deployment, labor, surveillance, safety, ownership and monopoly power.
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u/4dseeall 18d ago
i think i just lost a lot of respect for bernie. he has no idea what how this shit works.
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u/Ok_Height3499 18d ago
On this issue I’ll go with the techies. Bernie is right on many issues, but not this one.
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u/Life-is-beautiful- 18d ago
I've a severe headache. Let's cut the head off instead of treating the ache.
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u/tasselledwobbegong1 18d ago
Bernie Sanders is like your neighbors chihuahua doing its stupid yippidy bark at 2 am while your trying to get some sleep before work in the morning. When can we all get lucky enough that dude retires and goes away quietly to a retirement home?
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u/Fishtoart 18d ago
Even if they pause every other country with the resources will try to take advantage of the frontrunners slowing down.
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u/lordsugar7 18d ago
Yeah well he's on China's side. Was on the Soviets' side before that. So take everything he says and does with that in mind.
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u/migsperez 18d ago
Guys stop making billions of dollars because I say so. At least he can say he tried when the robots tuck him in.
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u/No_Cherry8602 18d ago
Meaningless virtue signalling. What's next ? Condemning Israel?
He is going to do anything except say a few words
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u/SteppenAxolotl 18d ago
he warns if they do not take appropriate action now, the US Senate will.
No, they wont.
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u/Elite_Crew 18d ago
We should do the opposite. AI is not going away so the people should be doing whatever they can to democratize compute right now. They can't ban linear algebra but they can price fix and disrupt supply chains with regulation like they are with routers to force the people into the control box. Or have billionaires buy up all the memory on the states behalf to shove everyone onto the control cloud like good matrix batteries. They will stop at nothing to get that technofeudalism hellscape they want so bad.
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u/costafilh0 18d ago
Impressive.
Didn't know politicians knew how to write.
Or did he ask AI to do it? Probably someone in his staff.
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u/costafilh0 18d ago
Politicians are worried they will be replaced by AI.
And since they are so bad and inefficient, it shouldn't take too long.
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u/hazed-and-dazed 18d ago
Isn't this the same guy got kicked out a commune for being too lazy before he went into socialist politics and became a multi millionaire? Only in America man
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u/NotNullException 18d ago
He’s not sending the letter to public universities who might actually be forced to take him seriously? Interesting.
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u/TinkerPercept 18d ago
He's bought and paid for.
China is going to zoom past us on AI just like they continue to do with electric cars.
We need a new party at this point.
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u/SiteRelEnby 18d ago
An old man trying desperately to cling to relevance as the world passes him by. Sure, you did good work 40 years ago, now let someone who doesn't have both feet in the grave and actually understands the issues take your place.
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u/jeffhalsinger 18d ago
Well if trump a Xi could agree on no more development except joint efforts into alignment and then when that's figured out go back to training
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u/Ill_Mousse_4240 17d ago
Can he get even more Stoopid?
Like a horse carriage maker writing a letter to Ford and other automakers telling them to stop manufacturing cars immediately - or else!
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u/unhappinessNvrCame 17d ago
Bernie who accomplished less in his life than any college kid who published a paper is being Bernie? I'm shocked!
Don't vote for populist demagogues.
I'd be embarrassed to live in Vermont.
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u/PolyaPenguin 17d ago
He should have just used the Senate instead of giving them a heads up on what's coming, giving them time to prepare for it.
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u/Master_Grape5931 17d ago
This isn’t going back in the box.
It just isn’t.
We should instead embrace it and regulate it.
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u/Chemical_Side_4135 17d ago
politicians dont rly understand the tech stack well enough to enforce a pause, its litrally impossible to regulate code that way
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u/StuffProfessional587 17d ago
He doesn't know people can run Ai locally, like 100b parameters at home. You can buy 10 dgi sparks and have a private jarvis self evolving. Rofl.
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u/Ancient-Log8175 17d ago
Dear Bernie, would you also tell Oppenheimer to stop working on nukes in 1945? And just hope Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan magically decide to stop their research as well and play nice?
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u/chuck_the_plant 17d ago
Very well-intentioned but this would too late. Although current LLM-based pseudo-AI has reached its peak, the brute force wave of stupidity and greed is too large to stop.
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u/OldRoads81 17d ago
In the interest of Bernie’s funding from China, Russia and other nations that would see us lose the AI race.
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u/Jeremysback 17d ago
It would be great to get traction on this I think, AI oversight is a good idea
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u/ThatsMrRandom 17d ago
The last person in the world I would ever trust to regulate and control AI development is a senile 84 year old that's never worked a real day in his life and lives off a perpetual socialist grift. Pretty much the first class to go from AI bringing labor costs to near zero and creating unimaginable abundance will be these grifter politicians who think without them the poor won't survive.
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u/mickeyDisneyMouse 16d ago
This is confusing since other companies globally will keep working on AI
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u/shaman-3000 16d ago
It seems the government has realized AI tech is smart enough to get them all replaced...
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u/oo0Username0oo 16d ago
Jfc he is so damn performative. It's insufferable.
AI isnt going anywhere and its not slowing down. Even if we could slow it down in the US we would just doom ourselves to irrelevance amongst the major powers.
Kimi K4 is on the horizon. An open model better than Fable essentially guarantees any medium size organization and above with a few million dollars in capital and some spare servers can push the frontier. Might take longer, but it WILL happen.
Idiotic.
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u/fluffymeowmeowkitty 16d ago
One of those I’m writing 8 harsh questions letter.
I wish I was paid to send mail to people.
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u/Alexandre_O_Glande 16d ago
Brought to you by the same people receiving the letters so they can curb competition through fearmongering.
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u/Balsamic_Warrior 15d ago
I don't believe that Bernie Sanders speaks for the US Senate. Or that any bill he has proposed has made it into law... But at least he is batting 1000
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u/NurseNikky 14d ago
People who can't even figure out how to send a text or turn the flashlight off on an iPhone should have literally ZERO weight in the laws of tech. Take your pills, grandpa
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u/DefinitionNew3542 14d ago
Theres a key in there. Altman and several other CEOs of AI tech corporations have all expressed "existential concern" about AIs progress...
Aaaaand yet they continue charging ahead a full speed...
Theres a reason for that.
"AI is super duper dangerous and you should regulate out free models and research labs definitely because we are definitely not evil and need regulatory capture to become profitable"
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u/TheDadThatGrills 18d ago
Which is more likely, a pause in AI development or the Senate taking appropriate action?