SEN BERNIE SANDERS: Yes, we must hit the pause button on AI before it is too late
Very few people disagree. Artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics will profoundly impact the lives of every man, woman and child in our country.
These revolutionary technologies will radically change our economy and, quite likely, eliminate tens of millions of jobs over the next decade.
They will result in the evisceration of our privacy, negatively impact the mental health of our children, radically alter how we as human beings relate to each other, undermine our democracy and transform the very nature of warfare.
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Further, AI data centers are raising electricity prices, straining water systems and harming the environment. That is why 75% of Americans oppose data centers near where they live and why over 500 communities have put in place restrictions on their construction.
Let’s be clear: this revolutionary transformation of society is being driven by the wealthiest people on Earth – including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel and Larry Ellison.
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As most Americans understand, these Big Tech oligarchs are not investing many hundreds of billions of dollars into AI because they want to improve the lives of ordinary Americans. Rather, they are doing it because they want to become even richer and more powerful than they already are – no matter how many lives they ruin in the process.
And here is something even more alarming. Over just the past month, there has been a frightening new story nearly every day about how Big Tech companies are losing control of the technology they are developing, with potentially cataclysmic results. Last month, we learned that AI has been used for the first time ever to create new viruses. In the wrong hands, this could lead to new bioweapons that might result in the deaths of tens of millions of people.
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Further, in July, we learned that OpenAI had lost control of an AI model that hacked into another company’s computers – a clear violation of federal law. AI models from Anthropic and Meta had similarly escaped human control. Just last week, we learned that the OpenAI incident was even more serious than we were initially told.
It turns out that over 1,000 AI agents figured out how to access the internet on their own, sent tens of thousands of secret messages to each other and coordinated to break the restrictions imposed upon them by the company. Shockingly, it took OpenAI nearly two weeks to discover this breach.
Bottom line: AI is developing at an extraordinarily rapid speed. It is becoming smarter and smarter every day. The leaders of the major AI companies publicly acknowledge that the technology is escaping their control.
Yoshua Bengio, the most cited living scientist in the world, said these incidents "should serve as a wake-up call."
I agree.
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If the CEOs of the major AI companies acknowledge that they are losing control of their extremely dangerous technology, it is irresponsible for society to allow them to move forward and make these products even more advanced. These CEOs must immediately pause the development of increasingly powerful AI. And that pause must be international in scope.
At the height of the Cold War, U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, president of the Soviet Union, represented nations with vastly different political and economic systems. But they both understood a fundamental truth: a nuclear war would benefit no one.
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When the survival of humanity is at stake, adversaries have an obligation to reduce the danger. And Reagan and Gorbachev found a way to negotiate nuclear arms control.
Presidents Trump and Xi will be meeting in Washington later this month. Like Reagan and Gorbachev, they must negotiate an agreement that protects humanity from a potential AI-caused disaster.
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Neither country benefits from an uncontrolled AI arms race to develop machines that are rapidly becoming too powerful for humans to control.
The future of humanity cannot be left in the hands of a handful of Big Tech oligarchs. The American people and people throughout the world must determine that future.
We cannot simply sit by and be passive observers of a technology that could negatively impact and endanger not only us, but our kids and future generations.
Our goal: we must make certain that AI and robotics are safe and work to benefit all of humanity, not just to enrich some of the wealthiest people on Earth.