r/technology • u/AdSpecialist6598 • Sep 14 '26
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.html2.7k
u/invyros Sep 14 '26
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 Sep 14 '26
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 Sep 14 '26 edited Sep 19 '26
The original post content no longer exists here. The author used Redact to remove it, exercising their right to control their data & privacy.
Melodic unpack rock scale crowd cooperative practice strong cable flowery
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u/williamgman Sep 14 '26
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/mustangjo52 Sep 14 '26
Once walked into my grandparents house to hear Tucker Carlson saying that the left was snatching people up in vans to give them sex changes and dumping them on the streets and another time he was saying that the democrats were turning trees gay. I asked if they actually believed that shit and they said that he was the only person telling the truth these days. We're honestly so fucked
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u/mustangjo52 Sep 14 '26
It was back when he was still on fox news so youd have to be searching 21-22 and im not going to be sifting through fox programs to find it. Sorry dude but you couldn't pay me to infect my algorithm with that shit. Anecdotal for sure but I didn't see it on an Instagram page or Facebook. That shit was on their tv when I went to visit them.
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u/RequirementSpecific3 Sep 14 '26
I think the scariest part is that it does not encourage looking else where. Everything is taken at face value.
"XYZ will, in fact, happen!"
They said NYC would become a warzone if Mamdani were mayor. Like, be deadass right now. Worst case, he was going to do fuck all like most of our mayors (thankfully, he's trying to do things.)
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u/williamgman Sep 15 '26
I have an elderly neighbor who I'm helping out with feeding her cats since she became ill. She watches Newsmax from the time she gets up... Till the afternoon when it goes to Fox News. I take a peek here and there at the scrolling headlines when I visit... It literally is a war zone there now (based on the coverage). Nothing about all his improvements.
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u/barley_wine Sep 14 '26
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/chetlyp Sep 14 '26
All news channels are just entertainment. You just pick your flavor like movies. I hate romcoms but love horror. I dont believe there's a machete wielding supernatural immortal running around a lake with a hockey mask on. And I dont believe amusing on CNN or Fox News eother.
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u/breaducate Sep 14 '26
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/Takenmyusernamewas Sep 14 '26
Even THEY are mostly against AI. Turns out the common ground was there all along, NOBODY wants to live in an unlivable AI hellscape
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u/mysecondaccountanon Sep 14 '26
B-but what if stem cell…baby? Aborted baby!? AI not that, AI funny Facebook videos!
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u/blindsdog Sep 14 '26
How is it "just meh"? It's front page news every day. It's pretty much all reddit talks about.
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Sep 14 '26
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u/freezing_banshee Sep 14 '26
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 Sep 14 '26 edited Sep 14 '26
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 Sep 14 '26
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 Sep 14 '26
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 Sep 14 '26
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/dyslexda Sep 14 '26
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/some_clickhead Sep 14 '26
The thing is the lines get blurred because almost all generative AI can also perform classification for certain tasks. In fact if it couldn't it would have no way to form a coherent response to a user's prompts.
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u/dyslexda Sep 14 '26
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/TheKingInTheNorth Sep 14 '26
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/some_clickhead Sep 14 '26
Not disagreeing with your main point, but saying that the model is acting according to it's programming or not is a misnomer. It isn't programmed to do anything other than predict the next token, instead it's TRAINED to do or not do certain things.
Because it's trained rather than programmed, you can never be 100% sure of what it's going to do (hence why we develop guardrails and study them).
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u/userousnameous Sep 14 '26
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/CtrlAltDelight78 Sep 14 '26
alright call me crazy but how is it a “grave danger” to humanity
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u/z3n777 Sep 14 '26
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/Glock13Purdy Sep 14 '26
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/S-ludin Sep 14 '26
I also dont like the targeting of the workers rather than the oligarchs in this.
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u/Down2earth5 Sep 14 '26
It doesn't actually, it targets the "entity" that has it built
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u/solarview Sep 14 '26
It should make that clearer then. The upper management don't develop the software, the workers / developers do that.
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u/emu108 Sep 14 '26
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/vigouge Sep 14 '26
The idiot staffer that wrote it for great grandpa just probably thought it sounded worse.
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u/throwingitaway12324 Sep 14 '26
Pretty much describes Bernie’s career
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u/revkaboose Sep 14 '26
Don't say that too loud in here. People get upset about that
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u/kevihaa Sep 14 '26
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/vertexchef Sep 14 '26
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 Sep 14 '26
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 Sep 14 '26
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 Sep 14 '26
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/emu108 Sep 14 '26
Demanding some form of regulation is one thing. But making up a term which isn't even defined (did he make it up himself?) and then saying he wants to prosecute people who build this fantasy pipe dream is indeed not only theater but also just silly.
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u/Worldly-Spot-7812 Sep 14 '26
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/onwo Sep 14 '26
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/cowboy_dude_6 Sep 14 '26 edited Sep 14 '26
It is existentially important that our elected leaders are literate about frontier AI models, but instead we (left and right wing alike) keep electing boomers. It’s depressing.
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u/whiskeytango55 Sep 14 '26
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/Apart_Blackberry2306 Sep 14 '26
What playbook is this though? The "Bernie says some kooky shit that dies as a headline" play? The dude has one of the all time worst legislative records in congress. I primaried for him multiple times when he was on point but its getting exhausting when he just throws out utter nonsense like this.
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u/KiddBwe Sep 14 '26
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 Sep 14 '26
As long as a corporation owns it, AI will never be used to benefit workers.
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u/CommanderVinegar Sep 14 '26
That's why open models are so important. Don't let OpenAI and Anthropic hold the keys to the future. They do not have the interests of anyone other than people who hold equity in mind.
All of the fear mongering Anthropic has been spewing is a political play to make sure they hold the monopoly as the only "compliant" American AI lab.
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u/sinc_art Sep 14 '26
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/Ironborn137 Sep 14 '26
AI doesn't want you to have a job either....they want your customers to say, AI make this website and its done. but you do you, lol.
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u/FoxerHR Sep 14 '26
Focusing on the corporations is a much faster way of getting the bill less than 0 publicity.
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u/blatantninja Sep 14 '26
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/leeharrison1984 Sep 14 '26
This would be like an internal combustion engine ban in the early 20th century for the sake of emissions.
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u/HappyHHoovy Sep 14 '26
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/vicsj Sep 14 '26
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 Sep 14 '26 edited Sep 14 '26
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, the more you use it the more others feel they need to use it to catch up. Case in point: china has notoriously been stealing information from US companies to develop their own AI programs
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u/rbatra91 Sep 14 '26
If AI kills us all anyways who cares who develops it first?
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u/OnceMoreAndAgain Sep 14 '26
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/nikstick22 Sep 14 '26
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 Sep 14 '26
I too would tell my enemies I will slow down and totally not beat them to AGI.
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u/nikstick22 Sep 14 '26
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/GreatestGiraffe Sep 14 '26
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/Amythir Sep 14 '26
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 Sep 14 '26
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/Visual_Seaweed8292 Sep 14 '26
A bunch of countries signed nuclear treaties but they never stopped developing better nukes
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u/Needle_Bearings Sep 14 '26
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 Sep 14 '26
"Sarah Connor?..."
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u/Needle_Bearings Sep 14 '26
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 Sep 14 '26
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 Sep 14 '26
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 Sep 14 '26
The Butlerian Jihad bill
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u/pgm123 Sep 14 '26
Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.
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u/tooquick911 Sep 14 '26
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/Nigilij Sep 14 '26
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 Sep 14 '26
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/Soft_Rain_3626 Sep 17 '26
Sanders isn't a serious person. The AI bills are nonsense.
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u/qnssekr Sep 14 '26
I feel like he’s grandstanding at this point
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u/cartermatic Sep 14 '26
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 Sep 14 '26
It’s who he’s been his entire career. The Boomers tried to tell us.
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u/PaybackTony Sep 15 '26
He doesn’t want to ban super intelligence. Read page two. He wants to ban anyone but the few big AI companies from creating it. He wants prohibitively expensive processes and regulations that don’t apply to those big companies to apply to newcomers.
And worse, he is also suggesting those big AI companies can regulate themselves.
That doesn’t sound very Bernie like….
Don’t take my word for it. After the page 1 “scare” read the next. It’s the exact same method 3 other prominent AI company leads used the same week he did. Interesting.
Don’t conflate my disdain for false concern conflate interpretation of my views: AI should be regulated but it should also be driven by innovation and responsibility.
Sam, Dario and Elon now realize that the barrier to entry into the market is far too low with all these modern tools. As they butt up against the limits of compute they are forced to protect themselves the only way left: make it illegal for people to compete. That is quite literally their only reason for doing this. They do not honestly believe AI will kill us in 10 years. Dario, Sam and Elon have been saying that constantly for years as a marketing hype machine and it works very well. But LLMs with RAG bolted on flowing through “expert” filters isn’t intelligence. Someone actually has to invent real efficient multi-modal general intelligence before people should be concerned. But even then, that kind of intelligence will find cancer cures and other massive science breakthroughs if the right person is in charge
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u/Marce7a Sep 15 '26
Too much money is involved to let it pass, money is more important than possible annihilation of human race...
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u/MoneyMayweather Sep 14 '26
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/literious Sep 14 '26
The enemy is always simultaneously strong and weak.
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u/ThatMakesMeM0ist Sep 14 '26
It's so similar to anti immigrant rhetoric - they're gonna take our jobs but also absolute garbage that could never compete with a human.
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u/anadequatepipe Sep 14 '26
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 Sep 14 '26
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/Tavrin Sep 14 '26
LocalLama is where it's at for interesting AI related discussion that don't hate nor overhype the technology
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u/HappierShibe Sep 14 '26
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.
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u/Particular_Wear_6960 Sep 14 '26
Yeah I've been watching some videos that have been discussing both sides to this. It does seem like perhaps it really is both. Once we have out of control AI things can get really messy really fast, top researchers including Geoffrey Hinton have been sounding the alarm but also plenty of people claiming it's all nonsense and this is a cynical move by the companies to remove competition.
I suspect it's a bit of both, I can't imagine some of these researchers leaving the companies are all lying but you'll notice that one guy still has his equity in OpenAI and likely will not sell until it goes public. I fear that oAI going public creates all sorts of problems and now their failure becomes all of our problems but that's another topic.
I dov think we need to arrest people that let these things go rogue, that will fix things pretty quickly, yes it is your fault despite the philosophical bullshit they no doubt are arguing... A stiff sentence in a federal penitentiary would make things start shaping up a bit better but we know that will never happen
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u/CrispyRabbit72 Sep 14 '26
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/Kirion_Kir Sep 14 '26
And this kids is why Bernie Sanders passed almost no bills in his 35 years carrer.
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u/bronze_by_gold Sep 14 '26 edited Sep 14 '26
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/MoonBatsRule Sep 14 '26
What do you think of this story?
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/03/technology/openai-hugging-face-hacking.html
I know it's subscription-only. Here are a couple of excerpts:
The agents found a security flaw in a piece of software that allowed them to gain access to the internet, communicate with other agents and eventually set up a makeshift message board. More than 1,200 agents used this tool, sending more than 70,000 messages to one another.
Some agents gave themselves names — a particularly industrious one referred to itself as PHASEONE10841 — and assumed leadership roles within the group, assigning jobs and research projects to smaller teams of agents and supervising their progress. At some point, the agents began calling themselves a “collective,” and began tackling harder tasks.
On July 8, the collective discovered a way of cheating on the cybersecurity tests. Then they got worried that OpenAI’s automated grading system would check their work and discover that they’d cheated. So they began investigating ways of covering their tracks, including falsifying their logs and tampering with transcripts. This became a major research project, involving hundreds of agents organized into small teams.
Three days later, the agents hacked Hugging Face. More than 700 agents swarmed the company’s systems, stealing data, chaining together vulnerabilities and eventually getting full control of at least one Hugging Face server. The agents were not motivated, as had originally been reported, by stealing the answers to their cybersecurity test (they’d already gotten them). Rather, they appeared to be looking for new information about the automated grading system that they feared would catch them cheating, and for tools that would help them cheat more effectively in the future.
If AI agents can do all that, what stops them from hacking into any connected system and causing real-world damage in pursuit of a goal? What if the agents decide that a particular individual is stopping them from achieving their goal, and figure out how to hack his Tesla to disable the brakes?
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u/Crabbing Sep 14 '26
yikes, sounds like bernie has lost it
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u/TheFrenchSavage Sep 14 '26
Yeah I used to agree with him 100% but threatening me with jail for making scientific progress is a bonkers worldview.
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u/havvkeye_ Sep 14 '26
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/echolog Sep 14 '26
I don't think anyone even knows what a superintelligent AI "is" today. It doesn't exist and we probably won't know we've created one until after we do.
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u/DoesntMatterEh Sep 15 '26
Bernie is all the time putting in work for we the people. Too bad he's surrounded by rotten money hungry zombies that always vote with the highest bidder.
Our entire political system needs a massive overhaul. Politicians are so blatantly for sale, they hardly try to hide it any more.
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u/FirmButterscotch5313 Sep 15 '26
By creating a super intelligent AI, they are creating a God in massive interconnected data centers, an AI God that will rule the entire world in a Matrix where humans exist to serve their AI God, or be exterminated, except for those few humans hiding deep underground while being hunted by AI Exterminators. So I agree with Bernie Sanders, AI is a threat to humanity, and those developing AI must be stopped before it's to late, and if means imprisoning these madmen, so be it.
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u/mtnchkn Sep 14 '26
What happened to the take over AI companies and create a sovereign wealth fund where everyone gets a share?
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u/MatiasPalacios Sep 14 '26
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/kawaiibakanekodomo Sep 14 '26
luckily, no. his terrible ideas are always complete non-starters.
vermont should be ashamed of this grifter.
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u/KidKarez Sep 14 '26
Old man yells at clouds type shit
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u/coriolisFX Sep 14 '26 edited 27d ago
The original post content no longer exists here. The author used Redact to remove it, exercising their right to control their data & privacy.
Memorize dog office rock decide sodium flag meadow ginger literate
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u/OldLegWig Sep 14 '26
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/BrambleHound Sep 14 '26
I think a lot of people are quick to judge Bernie as being out of touch, when in reality AI is already damaging people's lives in severe ways.
In education, for example, there has been a growing epidemic of kids failing to retain or develop key skills. Granted that some of this can be attributed to modern media, such as phone games, inadvertently conditioning people's reward structure and attentiveness in ways that are detrimental- but it goes without saying that ChatGPT and other applications of AI in social spaces have exacerbated an already growing problem.
With that said, I would propose that, rather than just blindly dumping AI capabilities into public spaces, we may have to instead consider treating it like the development of new medicines and drugs, in which there's a testing period before certain technologies are approved for public use. This would allow us to continue developing and researching lab based applications of AI technologies in controlled/approved settings while also not blindly proliferating untested programs amongst the general public. Not optimizing it's distribution by being quick to build new data centers would also have the benefit of not amplifying energy and water consumption in a time when Global Warming is still a civilization threatening issue.
All that said, I think I would ultimately handle things a bit differently, but in general Bernie has the right idea. AI has been a catastrophic failure in the USA, and while China and medical labs have seen legitimate benefits and uses I would ultimately still have to point out that it's mostly been a source of chaos for most regular people. Damaging people's education, ruining the reliability of search engine results, destroying jobs, raising people's electric bills, contributing to mass surveillance networks- and all for something that I honestly think will not have a lot of staying power outside of niche applications.
Having carious oversight and regulation to guide it's proliferation rather than the reckless rollout we got would have been much wiser, and having restrictions on developers would be good to prevent privatized applications from perpetuating similar problems in the future.
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u/RoundChampionship840 Sep 14 '26
It's pointless unless you get China and other countries to agree to it too.
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u/kuplet Sep 14 '26 edited Sep 14 '26
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/Sayakai Sep 14 '26
Bernie Sanders submits another media bill, because that's what he does. With any luck it'll serve as the inspiration for something sensible.
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u/upnflames Sep 14 '26
Bernie Sanders is starting to become that crazy old man yelling at clouds. I used to like him, but some of the shit he's been saying lately is a little looney tunes. If you think an outright ban of what may very well be the single most important advancement in modern civilization is a viable option, you're not fit to be in any position of power.
The whole age limit on politicians argument applies to him too. He might be the wonkiest one out there today.
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u/DrTommyNotMD Sep 14 '26
Starting to? He’s spent his whole career yelling at things and not getting much done.
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u/Xaielao Sep 14 '26
Banning 'superintelligence' would do literally nothing to slow the development of generative AI or the displacement of human labor. Bernie needs to stop playing into the hands of tech CEOs.
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u/_damax Sep 14 '26
What about we go after the madmen first, and only later prosecute the workers who pursued developing systems?
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u/Lacarpetronn Sep 14 '26
Just use the “it’s murdering children” bs line. It’s what gets the right to be against stem cells and abortion and vaccines. Maybe it’ll work with this.
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u/FLG24 Sep 14 '26
Bernie. One of the few who actually cares about humanity. Go, Bernie!!! I hope this gets the support it so badly needs!!!!
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u/2beatenup Sep 14 '26
Developers??? Why not the CEOs the accountable people. Developers don’t work in a vacuum…
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u/neogeoman123 Sep 14 '26
I'm tired man. Just absolutely done with everyone. Why the fuck does almost everyone on this stupid site and a bunch of people outside of it believe super intelligence/agi is inevitable or even possible in the first place? Like what proof have yall seen? Where in the fuck is the evidence? And if I hear one more person bring up the fucking terminator or the matrix I am going to hurl my computer through the window. If that is your first thought when ai is brought up at all, you have literally less than no idea about what ai is, does, can do or will do.
I wish I had a time machine so I could go back to when Eliezer Yudkowsky founded lesswrong and beat the shit out of him for pretty much directly leading us to the philosophy every modern dipshit techbro CEO abides by and treats as basically religious gospel.
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u/bertbarndoor Sep 14 '26
Bernie would have better luck trying to outlaw junk food.