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  • Hacker News
  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.
  • 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.
  • How is this supposed to stop development outside of the US?

    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 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.

  • It’s ironic you pearl clutch over the state of US politics but can’t seriously engage with the actual politics.
  • 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"

  • It's entirely possible for the pie to grow and for your piece to still end up smaller than it was before. This should be obvious.
  • 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.
  • I don't see how AI brings that about since the thing keeping us from having that now is not a lack of "I".
    by tzs
  • 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.
  • > AI is our best shot at a post-scarcity society

    Whenever I hear AI (or a token predictor in its current form) will solve some universal problem like hunger etc., a picture comes to my mind. . It's a picture of a mom breaking bricks with a hammer to be used for molding concrete, with a child nearby playing, who is tied with a rope to a pole. It's not an imaginary picture, it's real, etched in my memory from childhood. It's a reality that's driven by scarcity- of food and security.

    How will AI solve this to bring post scarcity society?

  • "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.

  • 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.

  • 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!

  • This is either a troll or a shockingly naive understanding of how scarce resources are allocated
  • 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.

  • I suspect AI will save more people than it kills so we may not have to do much tolerating.
  • 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.

  • 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.

  • "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.

  • 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.”

    by -_-
  • 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...

    by dang
  • unfavorable or symbolic bills introduced for fundraising, campaign attack ads, etc.

    Happens when one party holds most power in govt.

    May not even reach the floor for a debate, let alone vote.

  • Especially with Sanders who has sponsored or co-authored 2 laws[1][2] that have passed and were signed into law, and a few pieces of minor legislation renaming post offices.

    [1] Veterans' Compensation Cost-of-Living Adjustment Act of 2013

    [2] Cancer Registries Amendment Act (1992)