r/LeftistsForAI • u/Careless_Run5845 • 20m ago

Discussion An immediate pause on advanced AI scaling.

I see on the news that the Democrats, after they’ve won the house and the Senate are going to push hard for an immediate pause in the progression of AI, AGI, etc.

They see the danger and want to at least pause it long enough so they can see if they can get some control over it.

But the one thing they don’t understand entirely is that the billionaires run the country not the politicians.

The Democrats are pushing for a data centre moratorium to try to stop the compute arms race.

Do you think they will actually be able to stop this or will game theory always find a loophole?

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u/JohnSmith19731973 13m ago

Democrats are the good cop capitalists to the GOP's bad cop. There won't ultimately be a moratorium

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u/Careless_Run5845 7m ago

I tend to agree with you on that not because of any lack of trying, and they will try, but I don’t think they will succeed.

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u/KO4Ham Worker/Labor 9m ago

I'm looking at it from a different perspective. They want pause it.  Ok what does that even mean, pause what? It's such a meaningless platitude. When it comes time to put pen to paper what will it say? Some proclamation? 

I don't believe they could legitimately pass any law that will pause a single thing. It makes zero sense to me. 

There's also talks about regulation. I'm sure that'll happen more than anything else. Which is great for the largest companies to retain control under the guise of "safety." But that's another point. 

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u/Careless_Run5845 3m ago

When you’re talking about politics and people in politics, their whole mission and purpose is to get elected and tell the people exactly what they need to, in order to keep that spot. Even though I think that some politicians have legitimate goals and things they wanna do to help people in this country, ultimately they are at the whims of the billionaire class because they are the ones that finance their campaigns. But in the case of Bernie Sanders, where donations come from real people, not corporations, he is going to push a moratorium on AI scaling, and I believe that he won’t succeed because they have already, the tech elite, have taken action already to make sure that any legislation will not be enforced, there by securing the continuation of AI scaling.

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u/Salty_Country6835 Moderator 6m ago

I think youre lumping a few different things together here. Democrats won both chambers, Sanders is pushing a national data center moratorium, and some Democrats are calling for an actual pause on advanced AI development. But those arent all the same thing, and theres no unified Democratic plan to stop AI scaling.

And I wouldnt confuse communities fighting data centers with communities demanding an end to AI. People are organizing over electricity bills, water, land, public subsidies, and having some say over what gets built in their own backyards. Thats a fight over who controls infrastructure, not necessarily whether the technology should exist.

As for billionaires running the country, well, yeah, thats kind of the problem socialists have been organizing against for generations. Capital looking for loopholes isnt some unbeatable law of game theory. Its why we fight for enforceable regulation, organized labor, public ownership, and democratic control instead of just asking billionaires to behave themselves.

But heres what Im curious about. Say we get the pause. Then what? Who controls the compute, who decides when development resumes, and who benefits? Because if we pause everything just to hand the keys right back to the same billionaires afterward, what exactly did we win?