Bernie Sanders Urges Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg to Pause AI Development: ‘Not Too Late to Avoid Disaster’
(AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) wants the whole artificial intelligence industry to take a break.
The socialist senator called on OpenAI boss Sam Altman and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to “pause” AI development for the sake of humanity in a letter obtained by Axios on Monday morning. Sanders also addressed his letter to Dario Amodei, the co-founder of Anthropic, the company behind Claude.
“Mr. Altman, Mr. Amodei and Mr. Zuckerberg: In the interest of humanity, stand by your words. Pause AI development. It is not too late to avoid disaster. Stop building machines that humans cannot control,” Sanders wrote.
He then warned, “Let me be very clear: If you do not take appropriate action now, my colleagues and I in the U.S. Senate will.”
Sanders said it was critical that tech execs all pause AI development because “we have seen human loss of control and the creation of potentially dangerous viruses” recently. He said the execs are all investing tens of billions of dollars for the technology without fully understanding it or having the ability to “predict or control” what it does.
Zuckerberg does not seem too worried about AI going rogue, at least based on his social media posts: He shared a clip of him sparring with UFC star Merab Dvalishvili aboard a giant barge on Lake Tahoe on Sunday.
Sanders has grown increasingly combative with AI in recent years. He slammed the “AI oligarchs” like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal in April for moving forward with AI development and argued nearly three out of four Americans want the government to regulate the industry more.
“How can we rush forward when AI could displace tens of millions of workers?” Sanders wrote. “Elon Musk has stated that ‘AI and robots will replace all jobs.’ Bill Gates has said humans won’t be needed ‘for most things.’ If machines can perform most economically valuable work better than humans can, how do people earn a living and support their families?”
Musk, for what it’s worth, has warned AI can wipe out humanity if it goes fully off the rails. But he has said the upside is too good to ignore, because it could lead to “abundance” for everyone.
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