https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Happens when one party holds most power in govt.
May not even reach the floor for a debate, let alone vote.
[1] Veterans' Compensation Cost-of-Living Adjustment Act of 2013
[2] Cancer Registries Amendment Act (1992)
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.”
Oh, so anybody who disagrees with me is evil?
This is the kind of attitude that ruined US politics.
But the fact that both liberals and conservatives think of the other as 'evil' is a large problem.
> intelligence beyond human control. (1)
to
> that will obviously end humanity (2)
There's quite an assumption on the feasibility of (1) and even a bigger jump that from (1) follows (2)
Some people can have less apocalyptic / more pragmatic views of the potential of AI.
And you are not seriously engaging with anything I’ve written I’ll add. The definition Bernie Sanders has for superintelligence involves it having the capability to “plan and execute the disempowerment of humanity”. That is going to lead to the end of humanity but feel free to quibble in support of what Sanders had set up as obviously severely undesirable.
Why should I? You've already declared me a traitor to humanity. You can't expect people to take your opinions seriously if you don't take theirs seriously.
We're going to use it to do incredible things that would otherwise be forever beyond our ability - a post-work economy, science fiction technologies, advanced mathematics, etc.
Citation needed. History has shown that we can't do this by ourselves because the psychopaths always rise to the top.
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.
You can thank the Oil and Car lobby groups for Congress' silence on car issues.
As long as that sweet sweet blood money keeps flowing into the pockets of politicians, nothing will get better.
I think right now, given this is all very new, we can and should be looking at regulation as we start to identify what shoudl be the upper limit.
The difference is that today, unlike in the 20th century, there's a feasible path to post-scarcity. It's not "around the corner" but there's a path if you squint. Myabe it won't pan out, but it's worth a shot. The irony is that leftists want to ban AI to preserve scarcity thereby protecting people's jobs.
It’s one thing to say something like: AI will enable lights out manufacturing and replace virtually all employees in that sector.
To which those employees respond: What will happen to us?
And they are told: things will be great, you won’t need to work in the factories any longer, and we will have no shortage of goods.
Do you see the missing link there? They might ask: “What happens to those goods? What happens to me? Do I get given the goods? Are the goods sold and then I am paid a stipend? I’m hungry. Will I still need to buy things? Okay, if so, but I have no money because I was fired.”
That said, some displaced workers have experienced substantial difficulty moving to other industries, especially if those new jobs are in different cities or countries. And it is also possible that this time is different, although I'm not convinced.
This process will take generations. Over time, people will work less and less as productivity steadily increases (we already see this in the pre-AI era as technology has accumulated). Eventually, AI will do all necessary labor and goods/services will be incredibly cheap. Over the decades, as this situation develops, our governments will become more socialist/redistributionist.
Also, it's possible that this technology just doesn't pan out. There could be a bottleneck or a nuclear war or whatever. Maybe it just stops scaling, or it stays in the realm of text-generation and can't replace manual labor. But it's worth a shot, and leftists should get on board.
I think the crux is in how fast you think the technology is developing. The widespread view in Silicon Valley is that drop-in remote workers will be a reality within a couple years. Sam Altman is already claiming that AGI has been achieved [1]. Jack Clark from Anthropic puts a >50% chance on recursive self-improvement by the end of 2028 [2]. This is an enormous sector of labor being made redundant in a very short amount of time.
So the actions taken in this specific administration over these next few years become pivotal. The industry is unregulated and currently undergoing explosive growth in a way we haven't seen since the railroads, in entirely the wrong direction to Sanders' interests. He is a major player in the political process, so of course he will take measures to get things under control.
> But it's worth a shot, and leftists should get on board.
That's why the bill is about "temporarily pausing" development, not banning it forever.
This is to say nothing of the catastophic risks that the bill is actually mostly about, not just the labor disruptions.
[1]: https://venturebeat.com/technology/welcome-to-the-agi-era-op...
[2]: https://x.com/jackclarkSF/status/2051312759594471886?lang=en
If it weren't for that, we already live in a post-scarcity world. But as such a state is anathema to the human condition, we continually strive to create new forms of scarcity that can separate the elite from the commons.
But if we solve food, hunger, housing, education, healthcare, and entertainment then that's enough for me. And no, it's not "the current political system" that prevents us from solving those problems now. Rather it's that engine of production is human labor, which forces us to rely on incentives.
In some sense I agree with you that starvation in the modern world is a political problem. Evidence for that is the common observation that famines don't occur in functioning liberal democracies.
But food production relies on more than technology. Human labor is necessary to produce food, and so incentives have to exist for people to do that work (prices, free markets, capitalism, inequality, etc). So if we decide "everyone deserves free food" then we are undermining the production of food. Why would people work in the fields when they could just collect their free food? Scarcity won't be truly gone until food is abundant whether or not there are any people working the fields.
Why should the owners undermine the value of their robots by providing free food for all? Those robots could be put to better use fighting wars instead.
The owners/workers at AI companies won't resist the redistribution. It will be seen as inevitable as AI performs a greater and greater share of labor. Also, the AI company owners/workers will accrue massive status and fame; which will become the new currency (like you noted in your first post).
Leftists oppose human suffering and disempowerment.
Maybe there will also be world peace!
Labor is one thing, but there will always be some scarcity such as natural resources. I still doubt all labor could be done by AI alone at any point in the next couple generations.
Second of all, the massive redistribution shows no signs of appearing anytime soon. In the meantime the industry is in the midst of hysteria about a "permanent underclass" [1]. And this is all happening using models built off of the works of all writers, artists, and creatives everywhere, which said creatives have to then rent from the labs.
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/30/opinion/ai-labor-work-for...
AI has achieved the same religious undertones as your average cult. Is the new god of the gaps for some tech people. The wild card to achieve anything.
It doesn't seem to me like we have any guarantee that AI will contribute to public wellbeing. Right now, the public is socializing the losses while the industry privatizes the technology and cozies up to the federal government. LLMs will be usable for mass surveillance and war long before it ever leads us to a post-scarcity society.
If anyone can name a rational reason why the top comment is the top comment but this one deserves -4, please say so.
We've been down this road before with cryptography. No, it's not going to work.
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.
> “Nearly every day, there is a frightening new story about how Big Tech companies are losing control of the technology they are developing, with potentially cataclysmic results,” Sanders said. “The leaders of the major AI companies publicly acknowledge that they do not fully understand the technology and that it is escaping their control... That’s why I am introducing legislation to immediately pause the development of increasingly powerful AI and ban the creation of systems that humanity cannot fully control"
(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)
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.
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.