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.”
Anybody who disagrees with the ban on superintelligence in principle, maybe not in practice, is a traitor to humanity and should be treated as such. Why would you support the existence of an alien intelligence running rampant in the world? So this one might as well be virtue signaling, though I don’t doubt there are a lot of anti-humanist readers here ready to tell me I’m wrong.
You actually support an intelligence beyond human control. Yes, you are evil. Anyone who supports anything that will obviously end humanity is evil. Notice I did not comment on pausing AI and I said ‘in principle’.
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.
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.
"Technology will free mankind from labor and usher in an era where everyone is simply allocated whatever they requre" was a staple of leftism up until the USSR collapsed.
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.
I think the difficulty for many people is not imagining a path to post-scarcity, per se, but instead that they have been given no commitments by their government or business leaders that they will get to benefit from it, after it is achieved.
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.”
The other difference is that the current admin is possibly the least likely in American history to support a massive redistribution and "government mandated middle class lifestyle". And the development of this technology has thus far been without the consent of those whose livelihoods are most threatened by it. It's no wonder Sanders and other leftists want more oversight.
There is no such thing as a post-scarcity world. Some resources are inherently scarce, such as social status, lifetime, or political power. As a result, even when productivity increases the benefits are hoarded by the few who wish to stand above all others. This has always held true regardless of political system.
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.
First of all, lefists oppose AI progress _because_ all labor is to be done by AIs. If corporations and states only need you for your labor and that can be done more cheaply by machines, then why keep you around at all?
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.
Actually, Heaven is our best shot at a post-scarcity society /s
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.
I don't think everyone having a middle class lifestyle where prices go near zero is what AI bros mean when they say AI will create a "permanent underclass".
Is there any evidence that "all labor" could be done by AI?
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.
HN has plenty of comments critical of AI training and AI in general. I don't think "Big AI" has downvote bot armies here, or if there are, they really need improvement because they clearly haven't been working lately.
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.
We decided after the Sandy Hook massacre that it was okay for a few kids to die in shootings every year so that people could keep their gun rights. Thank the gun lobby.
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 this is a false comparison. We do indeed tolerate a number. But we also regulate heavily to try and minimize that to a point where we do not negatively impact society (i.e. speed limit of 65mph on Highways, not 10 mph).
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.
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.
That's not what the bill is about. Did you read the article? It's explicitly about catastrophic risks:
> “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"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.”
Anybody who disagrees with the ban on superintelligence in principle, maybe not in practice, is a traitor to humanity and should be treated as such. Why would you support the existence of an alien intelligence running rampant in the world? So this one might as well be virtue signaling, though I don’t doubt there are a lot of anti-humanist readers here ready to tell me I’m wrong.
>Anybody who disagrees with the ban on superintelligence in principle, maybe not in practice, is a traitor to humanity
Oh, so anybody who disagrees with me is evil?
This is the kind of attitude that ruined US politics.
You are short-sighted to think that. What ruined US politics is the cycle of greed and money.
You actually support an intelligence beyond human control. Yes, you are evil. Anyone who supports anything that will obviously end humanity is evil. Notice I did not comment on pausing AI and I said ‘in principle’.
From
> 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.
It's not going to end humanity.
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.
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.
This is either a troll or a shockingly naive understanding of how scarce resources are allocated
"Technology will free mankind from labor and usher in an era where everyone is simply allocated whatever they requre" was a staple of leftism up until the USSR collapsed.
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.
I think the difficulty for many people is not imagining a path to post-scarcity, per se, but instead that they have been given no commitments by their government or business leaders that they will get to benefit from it, after it is achieved.
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.”
The other difference is that the current admin is possibly the least likely in American history to support a massive redistribution and "government mandated middle class lifestyle". And the development of this technology has thus far been without the consent of those whose livelihoods are most threatened by it. It's no wonder Sanders and other leftists want more oversight.
There is no such thing as a post-scarcity world. Some resources are inherently scarce, such as social status, lifetime, or political power. As a result, even when productivity increases the benefits are hoarded by the few who wish to stand above all others. This has always held true regardless of political system.
Nah, we just don't want AI's reins to be held by oligarchs.
Human-wellfare aligned, safe AI is our best shot at a post-scarcity society. Huggingface-hacking sycophants are not that.
Leftists oppose human suffering and disempowerment.
Feels more like leftists are pro-scarcity into order to "empower workers"
The future trillionaires who just lowered taxes and mocked social security recipients are going to give up products from their companies for free?
Maybe there will also be world peace!
"post-scarcity society"
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.
I used to think this but it seems to me that the most scarce and valuable resource will be having humans pretend to care about you.
I think this view needs to get out and meet some actual humans.
First of all, lefists oppose AI progress _because_ all labor is to be done by AIs. If corporations and states only need you for your labor and that can be done more cheaply by machines, then why keep you around at all?
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...
Actually, Heaven is our best shot at a post-scarcity society /s
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.
I don't think everyone having a middle class lifestyle where prices go near zero is what AI bros mean when they say AI will create a "permanent underclass".
I'm with slibhb. The death of all humans is a feature, not a downside.
granted, my ghost will be darkly amused at ChatHK47. Death to meatbag scum!
Is there any evidence that "all labor" could be done by AI?
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.
Brutal downvoting again by Big-AI PR agencies, maybe automated by now.
If anyone can name a rational reason why the top comment is the top comment but this one deserves -4, please say so.
HN has plenty of comments critical of AI training and AI in general. I don't think "Big AI" has downvote bot armies here, or if there are, they really need improvement because they clearly haven't been working lately.
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.
We decided after the Sandy Hook massacre that it was okay for a few kids to die in shootings every year so that people could keep their gun rights. Thank the gun lobby.
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 this is a false comparison. We do indeed tolerate a number. But we also regulate heavily to try and minimize that to a point where we do not negatively impact society (i.e. speed limit of 65mph on Highways, not 10 mph).
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.
"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.
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.
That's not what the bill is about. Did you read the article? It's explicitly about catastrophic risks:
> “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"
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.
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.
Intelligence is a weapon?
points gun from space
Always has been.
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.
[dead]
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.