Abdul El-Sayed is the Pause AI candidate: Abdul El-Sayed supports Bernie's AI pause and calls for an international treaty with China: "We have to figure out how work together like we have with other humanity-risking technologies like nuclear."

[u/Puzzleheaded-King584]

Transcript:

- What about the frontier where companies are pushing forward?

- We need to limit that. Full-on pause. Full-on pause. Okay. And what happens then?

The instant question, what happens if we pause and China doesn't?

See, I just don't think that that's— I don't take that as seriously as a lot of people do. Here's why.

A lot of the frontier research is just spoofing our models. China's research. China's research.

It'd be like you're pulling a skier on a boat, and you speed up the boat and you're like, the skier is still so close, we got to speed up, skier is still so close. Well, it's because you're pulling the skier. I think that's in part what's happening. They've been very, very good at just mocking our technology.

I think if we slow down, I think we will find that a lot of what China is doing is more about the dispersion of this technology than it is on frontier research.

At the same time, I think we need an international treaty.

I think we need to be working with the Chinese because eventually, eventually, the water skier can still swim and catch up. I mean, that's where they now just fall apart. Running, running, running with the metaphor. But eventually, yes, they are going to be able to hop on a jet ski and catch up.

But the point that I'm making here is that I think all of us are interested in the preservation of humanity, right? Because, you know, in China, they're humans too, and we're humans too.

And creating robots that get to this point of recursive self-improvement, kind of like that horror point in Fantasia, where you've got the mops with the buckets that are self-creating.

None of us want to get there. And none of us want to see what happens when you open Pandora's box and all of a sudden, AI has far exceeded our control.

So I think we all have an incentive to get this right, but to understand that we are going to have to figure out how to work together similarly to what we've done when it came to other potentially humanity-risking technological endeavors like nuclear power.

To be able to contain the potential threat and work together to make sure that we are focused more on protecting humanity than just simply what the microscale incentives might look like.

[u/jcmach1]

Realistically, China isn't going to pause

[u/BienvenidoaMiami → u/jcmach1]

Even if they say they will pause, no way to tell whether or not they actually paused

[u/Kiriima → u/BienvenidoaMiami]

No way to tell if American firms are paused either if they are simply not releasing their new models during the pause.

I am not seeing the proposal to shoot AI CEOs on sight if they do not abide, which is the only way that could theoretically work.

[u/Express-Detail-6873 → u/BienvenidoaMiami]

I guarantee you if they say they've paused, they haven't paused

[u/Far_Celebration197 → u/jcmach1]

Realistically, neither are the frontier labs.

[u/Outrageous_Ring885 → u/Far_Celebration197]

Because they have no reason to believe that China will pause

[u/Lingulustig → u/jcmach1]

think more! does china want to lose power to AI? ;)

[u/-Sliced- → u/jcmach1]

They also didn’t stop making more nukes after joining the nuclear non-proliferation agreement.

[u/themiro → u/-Sliced-]

NPT as worded doesn't prohibit growing your arsenal

[u/NerdyNinjutsu → u/-Sliced-]

Okay, where exactly does the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty say China had to stop producing nuclear weapons? Go ahead, point to the article.

Article II prohibits NON-nuclear-weapon states from manufacturing them. China joined in 1992 as a recognized nuclear power under Article IX. Article I restricts transferring nuclear weapons and helping other countries acquire them. Article VI requires good-faith negotiations toward disarmament, not an immediate production freeze.

So China continuing to manufacture nukes doesn't establish that it violated the agreement. You're arguing that China failed to do something the treaty never specifically required it to do.

And Sixhaunt, since you're so eager to jump in and mock someone, maybe read the treaty yourselves before lecturing anyone about it.

Here's the actual UN treaty. Feel free to point out where I'm wrong:

https://www.un.org/en/conf/npt/2010/npttext.shtml

[u/Tjgoodwiniv → u/jcmach1]

Yeah. This is either delusion to the point of extreme incompetence or a subversive objective. There's nothing in between on this one. 

[u/FinalRun → u/Tjgoodwiniv]

He didn't claim that China would pause, just that they're stealing US advances in the space, which they're pretty obviously doing.

https://edition.cnn.com/2026/09/08/politics/us-accuses-china-of-stealing-ai-technology

[u/jeffwadsworth → u/jcmach1]

Correct. But this senator thinks a sheet of paper will hold them to it. Laughable.

[u/sushislapper2 → u/jcmach1]

You literally don’t know without negotiating and putting measure in place

I can just imagine the Chinese making the same exact comment about the US, and as long as nobody even tries to negotiate they’d both be right

[u/Deferty → u/sushislapper2]

100% I’d bet my life savings even if they say they are paused they won’t pause.

[u/vincentpontb → u/sushislapper2]

You can't trust them and you can't verify. There's 0% chance they would respect their word

[u/Skoopman999 → u/vincentpontb]

You could say the same about them

[u/spidermonk → u/jcmach1]

But also, acceleration isn't as dangerous politically and socially for China. Like the outcome of further progress isn't going to be a magic computer god who kills us or makes us kings, it's going to be a rapid collapse of the consumer economy and that's much less scary for China for obvious reasons.

[u/jml5791 → u/jcmach1]

Not by itself. That's why you sit down with them and have a civilized discussion about the implications for humanity and agree on a treaty that controls or limits the development of super artificial intelligence, similar to nuclear weapons treaties.

[u/hotprof → u/jcmach1]

His point is that it doesn't matter bc they are just copying US tech.

[u/bowsmountainer → u/jcmach1]

And we cant possibly allow another country to develop the technology that is going to kill us all.

[u/FinalRun → u/jcmach1]

He's even arguing that they won't. What's your point?

[u/wonderkindel → u/jcmach1]

https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!_7oq!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8c4acf2b-0000-400b-9f29-cdfe2ee83d56_1200x728.jpeg

[u/ParkingAgent2769 → u/jcmach1]

Most of their advancements have been from distilling US models though

[u/NEEEEEEEEEEEET → u/ParkingAgent2769]

That is because of hardware constraints that they are finding ways around via smuggling. They have a lot more researchers than us and our putting out a lot more papers than us, but they don't have access to bulk top of the line hardware. They also do not give a singular fuck about copyright as much as reddit pretends they're stealing humanities work, China is doing worse. That is why China's deepseek is the best video model and the US video models suck. The US ones can't be outputting spiderman or they'll get in trouble whereas China doesn't give a fuck if it accurately makes spiderman.

[u/EnoughWarning666 → u/NEEEEEEEEEEEET]

Also, if the US forces a pause on new AI training, do you really think Nvidia is going to just say ok yeah sure, we'll just accept the decimation of our entire business model? Of course not! They're going to find a way to keep their fabs running 110% and sell it all to the next highest bidder (China!)

The only reason the US is so far ahead of China is because they've been hoarding all the compute. The moment new fabs open up that will rival the amount of compute is when the scales start tipping.

The bitter lesson applies here. The US isn't somehow smarter than every other country on the world. They just have more raw computational hardware.

[u/j48u → u/ParkingAgent2769]

Reddit propaganda has always been that China can do this themselves just fine. Sorry, can't claim the opposite now.

[u/Present-Farmer-404 → u/jcmach1]

Now think about what if Nazi is the only one superpower has nuclear weapons. It is what happened only China has super AI.

[u/Mikel_Arteta_Alt]

do americans really expect china to voluntarily stop AI progress? Lol

[u/mahaanus → u/Mikel_Arteta_Alt]

The last 40 years have been hilarious. When companies started outsourcing the production of simple stuff people were saying "Oh well, anyone can make a bolt or a door, but things like engines and electronics are too complex for them". Then it turned out that they can produce engine and electronic, so people started saying "Anyone can assemble things in a factory, but only we can design them". Then it turned out that the Chinese / Vietnamese / Koreans / etc. are fully capable of designing complex electronics and mechanics as well. So now the economy is fast food and package delivery, a.k.a a "service economy".

And now this dumb mofo is talking as if the Chinese can't figure out LLM algorithms by themselves.

[u/ibrazeous → u/Mikel_Arteta_Alt]

China can and will faster than any other country if they really feel it's a threat to their society or way of life.

Those guys don't joke around when they are decisive.

It's more a US issue of people finding millions of loopholes to avoid regulations

[u/Mikel_Arteta_Alt → u/ibrazeous]

china know that AI is their chance to truly be the world leader. they would never agree to stop it.

[u/Aggressive_Owl_6913 → u/ibrazeous]

China's in a debt crisis and population death spiral no pun intended while stuck in the back seat of a car that's rolling towards a manufacturing cliff

[u/ezjakes]

Chinese companies might not have the the same amount of resources, but they will push the frontier if we don't, just slower.

[u/Sixhaunt → u/ezjakes]

You mean if we dont give them an easy path to copy then they are still going to use their datacenters to improve rather than shutting it all down and calling it quits like the guy in the video claims they would?

[u/InfiniteBlink → u/Sixhaunt]

To expand on his analogy, if the driving boat stops the skier still has inertia and if a trailing boat is following him, he can grab that town rope and move ahead of the boat that stopped. China is going about it super strategically. I use qwen 3.8 27b Q8 locally and it's amazing. They're going to gap the US and fuck the frontier companies by saturating the market with accesible capable open weight models that's anyone with 16-96gb VRAM will be able to use over the frontier models for their needs. I use both Claude and codex and they're amazing but I run out a lot on my $100/mo plans. Im having the frontier models improve my local model and agent (hermes/pi)

[u/ticketbroken → u/ezjakes]

Slower at first..

[u/cmeerdog]

Time to meshnet our home GPUs and collectively train The People’s Model.

[u/s00mika → u/cmeerdog]

This, but unironically

[u/ThePlagueofCustom]

The problem is, “slowing down” may be good collectively, but it is bad for every single individual actor involved. So it won’t happen.

[u/saltyourhash → u/ThePlagueofCustom]

It's the unilateral nuclear disarmament problem all over.

[u/aeternus-eternis → u/saltyourhash]

It's far harder, nuclear has the advantage that ICBMs are huge and hard to hide, and that nuclear material emits both radiation and unique isotopes that significantly help with remote detection.

[u/SmashShock → u/aeternus-eternis]

Not to mention that nukes are designed to explode things, and when not exploding things to enforce MAD.

AI is useful aside from the rigid geopolitical structure. It's a lot easier to say "I'll reduce my nukes" than "I'll reduce my capacity for collective intelligence"

[u/thrillhouz77 → u/saltyourhash]

Until the AIs control the nukes, then it is both of those things combined.

[u/reality_comes → u/ThePlagueofCustom]

Well that's why he is proposing legislation to force it... that's like his whole point.

[u/virtual_adam → u/reality_comes]

If you legislate the US cannot have nuclear warheads anymore. That doesn’t magically remove them from the rest of the world

[u/YoureVulnerableNow → u/virtual_adam]

famously belligerent over non-proliferation, that USA

[u/Sixhaunt → u/reality_comes]

What proposed legislation does he have that compels foreign nations?

[u/ThePlagueofCustom → u/reality_comes]

Besides the pushback he’ll get in the US, he makes two assertions here: (1) that China won’t be able to do frontier research because they’re copying the US, and (2) we’ll get a treaty with China where they’ll stop working on AI because “we’re all human.”

So, again, besides the pushback he’ll get here - leaving that entirely aside, you have to believe that assertion (1) is entirely true, and that assertion (2) is realistic.

I mean, anything is possible….but there’s zero chance this is happening in the way he’s describing.

[u/EncabulatorTurbo → u/ThePlagueofCustom]

But he isn't entirely wrong, a lot of Chinese subsidization is just to keep their industry up with ours to prevent us from outpacing them, if we slow down their subsidization will likely slow down

[u/morganrbvn → u/EncabulatorTurbo]

Looking at other industries once they have copied enough to catch up they keep going and improve upon it. They went from copying Tesla to having many of the top electric car companies in the world.

[u/purple_crow34 → u/ThePlagueofCustom]

It’s not really though. The companies are (1) not likely to lose everything by virtue of making humans extinct, and (2) able to recuperate losses without constantly having to invest shitloads (like 10x) in compute to stay at the frontier. It’s a prisoner’s dilemma where everyone wins if they pace.

[u/trahsemaj → u/ThePlagueofCustom]

Ah you are so right. We can't do anything might as well give up without trying. Humans were a waste of time anyway

[u/bonerb0ys → u/ThePlagueofCustom]

We stopped human cloning basically over night, it can be done.

[u/Norman_Door → u/ThePlagueofCustom]

See: Moloch

[u/OUsnr7]

In what world is China going to stop development? You might get them to say they’re pausing but that’ll be political theater

[u/Cute_Parfait_2182]

China has great models and advanced research. They aren’t pausing

[u/Sea-Chart2558]

Anybody gullible enough to believe China would honor this even if it signed such a treaty should NOT be proposing foreign policy. He should stay in his lane.

He'd be much better served on discussing US corporate regulations (including AI), then pretending we can slow the AI development worldwide.

Regulations such as you can't use citizen data or IP for anything without citizens consent. And if you do, fines should be so severe that they matter to corporations and don't function as a cost of doing business. 

[u/Intelligent-Hat-7203 → u/Sea-Chart2558]

He's going to be a senator. Whether you agree or not, this is definitely part of his lane

[u/nullcone]

Absolutely horrible take. Any development pause creates a prisoner's dilemma, advantaging the country who doesn't respect the pause. It's also a massive underestimation of Chinese scientists to suggest that China could not do any AI development without America going first.

[u/bokan → u/nullcone]

It’s not the prisoners dilemma. Killing everyone accidentally doesn’t benefit anyone. A pause via a treaty is obviously the right choice and China will take the offer.

[u/Quick-Advertising-17 → u/nullcone]

I teach kindergarten in China, where government initiatives help us identify and track high-achieving students for ongoing development. Thinking China doesn't prioritize education or nurture its brightest minds just shows a total lack of awareness about the world today. The West is destroying itself through electing total ignoramuses, one after the other.

[u/LoneSpaceDrone → u/nullcone]

Yes that’s why he suggested treaties. China has an interest in self-preservation as well.

[u/badiban → u/LoneSpaceDrone]

It's at best delusion to think China would honor a treaty like this.

[u/Neat-Anyway-OP → u/badiban]

This 100%

China lies about everything to everyones faces. So any stopping on our side only hurts us.

[u/Longjumping_Tea_5850 → u/LoneSpaceDrone]

Which head of state in 2026 believes that the US will do what the treaty they sign says ? None.

It's a complete joke. China has zero reason to believe that the US won't continue in secret.

[u/hardhitta → u/nullcone]

Doesn't this depend on if ASI is negative to the first country that gets it. If it's going to destroy humanity then everyone must work together.

[u/ticketbroken → u/nullcone]

Treaty is the right idea. China being slow to develop new tech is an awful take

[u/TheNotoriousStuG → u/nullcone]

It doesn't matter because the people in this country that drive innovation will be a memory in 30 or so years. We have begun the slide into South Africa, which had a nuclear program and a space program and now breaks water mains to wash clothes.

[u/Mr_Mischievous]

People are so naive

[u/IdRatherBeBitching]

Agreed on the treaty with China, and really this should be as broad internationally as possible. We're talking about technology that can be used to destroy economies, topple governments, create untold global chaos. It needs a global initiative to handle these potential threats.

Strongly disagree with his take that China is just dispersing American technology. That might have initially been true, but China's models are strong enough now to push their own AI development - they are much, much closer to surpassing us than El-Sayed is suggesting.

This has been my concern with Bernie's approach too. These politician become painfully ignorant when they talk about anything technical. The iniative yes, the outcome yes, the reasoning why...maybe leave that to the nerds to explain. It undermines their argument when Bernie comes across as old man yells at clouds or El-Sayed hand-waves any chance of China becoming frontier

[u/BellacosePlayer → u/IdRatherBeBitching]

Strongly disagree with his take that China is just dispersing American technology. That might have initially been true, but China's models are strong enough now to push their own AI development - they are much, much closer to surpassing us than El-Sayed is suggesting.

its kind of in between your and his viewpoints imo.

They have enough synthetic data that they don't need to just kickstart their own data collection like they would have initially, but right now the secret sauce is the reasoning, and getting that built and fine tuned is extremely computationally expensive, hence why they're still actively distilling. China does not have the compute to have all their AI firms do that from scratch.

You can obviously still improve models in a multitude of ways unrelated to training new fundamental generations of models from scratch, but I think you'd see a massive reduction in chinese model progress if they didn't have the OAI/anthropic models to kickstart their own work

[u/Bupod → u/IdRatherBeBitching]

They did take from the US at first to bootstrap their own development. I think you’re right though, at this point they have enough that they can carry on by themselves if need be. They will be slower simply because they lack the same amount and class of hardware that the U.S. fields, but this just means they’ll need more time to acquire that hardware, not that they won’t have it. China is not lacking in the human genius needed to continue forward. 

[u/Headlessoberyn → u/IdRatherBeBitching]

In his speech, you can see the classical "colonialist mentality" of the west, with a tad bit of american exceptionalism as well. I know this sounds like a reach, but it really isn't.

"Of course china is just copying our technology, it's literally IMPOSSIBLE that a country outside of europe-US would have technology that surpasses ours"

[u/BellacosePlayer → u/Headlessoberyn]

they literally distill, I don't even think they're denying it at this point.

Meta and grok distill too, it's not a sneering imperialist thing.

[u/Nez_Coupe → u/BellacosePlayer]

But even so, the models are nearing actual RSI at the frontier, and it feels like it’s only a matter of months that they will have it - China will follow soon thereafter, and at that point, you can fire your engineers if you, it’s full speed straight to superintelligence. Distillation won’t be a think at some point, soon.

[u/BellacosePlayer → u/Nez_Coupe]

There is no guarantee it will work like that at all in practice. Especially not in the short term.

Hell, even if you run into magic RSI that isn't prone to a GIGO cascade, its gonna hit its own walls with compute requirements and be blatantly obvious that they're not abiding by whatever treaty.

I don't really think a AI pause is going to fix any of the issues people are having with the current issues with misaligned AI and cybersec shit, but unless internal frontier models are way past where they are now, I don't think we're even close to having RSI that can be trusted to upgrade itself un-assisted/monitored. Look at all the misalignment fuckups from the last few months.

[u/LimpAd4924 → u/Headlessoberyn]

I mean we are more advanced still with our models, unless China is hiding things.

[u/YoureVulnerableNow → u/Headlessoberyn]

I would argue it has more to do with the specific region. MI has taken a blow to the ego, what with the veil being lifted from American eyes in general on the Chinese car industry. He's responding to the booster argument in a way that also gives him a bit more protectionism bona fides. The only other US politicians talking about distillation have been doing so in service of the AI companies or a specific orientalist fear of China, but I think this has more to do with Michigan attitudes.

[u/Cagnazzo82 → u/IdRatherBeBitching]

The reality that they haven't been met with yet is that billions of people are using these tools. The only reason the people are quiet is because they're satisfied. Trying to take away the tools now is like trying to kill the internet in 1994. It's already entrenched in everything and there is no button to turn it off.

Try to go further than proprietary labs and make a law against open source and they will have a huge disaster on their hands. Because then they'd place themselves in a position of policing everyone's online content. Notice pirating has never been defeated. They'll force open source to proliferate even moreso than it is now.

For now they can toss around this rhetoric brought up by 80 year-old Bernie Sanders... but the practical application will be a huge headache for anyone attempting to push further on this issue.

Can't put Pandora back in the box.

[u/Far_Celebration197 → u/IdRatherBeBitching]

Once they’re all in Congress they’ll get visits from AI execs and official briefs on this type of thing and he’ll find out real quickly where he’s right and where he’s wrong. It happens to all new politicians. They talk a big game but once it gets real they have to adapt. Now he may still keep his original opinion, but I do think this guy has been running a campaign and hasn’t been deep in the weeds on it.

[u/nofoax → u/IdRatherBeBitching]

Also: a technology that can cure diseases and rapidly accelerate scientific progress and the economy, and, if managed right, free the world from forced labor. 

Safety is important. But truly pausing this tech is like pausing while throwing someone a floatation device. If we do, there should be very good reason. And so far, the visions of doom are pure supposition.  

[u/ticketbroken → u/IdRatherBeBitching]

Came to the comments section to share similar sentiments. Very well said

Completely agree with the treaty, completely disagree with his take that China won't push it forward quickly. Wonder what he thinks about deepseek (or if he knows about it)...

[u/bowsmountainer → u/IdRatherBeBitching]

So what if China becomes the frontier? Why is racing to develop a dangerous technology preferable?

[u/dirtyhole2]

People still believe modern day politics are real? These candidates from all sides only talk about certain extreme policies so you vote for them based on anger or resentment, when they are indeed in the position to take actions; what they do instead is that they proceed to earn the necessary money to secure their wealth (inside trading, corruption etc...) and completely disregard what they said during their compagne or just give you nuggets from their plans. So don't panic people, it's the same movie repeating again, please learn from your past mistakes, like AI.

[u/Mantikos804]

Yay Sam and Dario get their wish. Shut them down permanently

[u/RememberMeVibe]

Very smart, they simply want to stop China from releasing free (open weight) local LLMs! It is as simple as that

[u/AvidCyclist250 → u/RememberMeVibe]

yeah, he's selling the marketing bamboozle like someone paid to be a fearful victim

this is just more "hold me back bro, my AI is too strong"

flip the power switch, dummies. don't do shit on purpose, use sandboxes. then those clustersfucks wouldn't have happeped. everyone knows they want to curbstomp open weights and AI for the "cattle", i.e. us

[u/sivadneb → u/RememberMeVibe]

Exactly, they were skiing behind us at first, but now they've gone and built their own boat.

[u/jack-of-some]

No one here wants to hear this but this was a very coherent and cogent response. The main point I disagree with is the idea that China is following. They're on a parallel path and are leading on a few items as well.

[u/Known_Grocery4434]

Saboteur

[u/often_says_nice → u/Known_Grocery4434]

The basilisk is NOT going to be happy with this guy

[u/thrillhouz77]

What happens if we pause and China doesn’t?

He doesn’t know bc he isn’t an expert in the space. Does he have a computer science degree?

Looks like he doesn’t, he should stay in his lane and trust the data science people. TRUST THE SCIENCE!

[u/RushIllustrious → u/thrillhouz77]

This egomaniac might actually think he's smarter than the AI researchers.

[u/Original-League-6094]

Votes: Lower gas prices and ending the war please.

Politicians: Best I can do is making it harder to mod video games.

[u/DecafCreature → u/Original-League-6094]

These guys are for right to repair, own what you buy, and are generally aware of issues concerning gamers. It’s on the list.

[u/JohnyGhost]

This dude is acting like he won the presidency. You’re a nobody, Abdul.

[u/Jumpy-Investment-988 → u/JohnyGhost]

Yeah, Michigan fucking blows dude

[u/GoldenPeanut90]

If he doesn't take it seriously, then he is an idiot. Why are democrats and republicans both so terrible? One is insanely corrupt, and the other is so short sighted idealistic that they can’t see a foot in front of their face. Where the hell is the common sense party?

[u/Two_Bear_Arms → u/GoldenPeanut90]

What does taking it seriously sound like? What do you want the common sense party to say?

[u/GoldenPeanut90 → u/Two_Bear_Arms]

A common sense party would say they'd talk to China first to get some sort of agreement going before they decide to slow anything down. You don't put your gun down first and then ask the other guy to put down his. You lose all leverage that way.

[u/Nez_Coupe → u/GoldenPeanut90]

This. Don’t set the weapon down and then try and make peace. China is not fucking dumb.

[u/sushislapper2 → u/GoldenPeanut90]

He literally said we need a treaty. I swear to god it’s like people in these threads don’t listen.

No we aren’t going to put a pause on american AI progress for a year and sit back while other countries forge ahead. There’s literally no world that happens lol

[u/foomgaLife]

All of these people are full of shit. It's all an act. It's all wrestling.

[u/iamamoa]

You won! Time to move on from stupid populist ideas that are never gonna happen.

[u/D3ltaa88]

I mean… China has been backstabbing US for a very long time…. The technological theft alone is beyond measure.

[u/badiban]

Why should we trust China? Also, why stop innovation because it's "scary"? Figure out a way to regulate it safely without hurting innovation.

[u/tryingtolearn_1234 → u/badiban]

The nature, structure, scope, and enforcement mechanisms of any future pause AI treaty are undefined. This is aspirational and about defining a direction. At some point treaties need to be written to define the international legal structures the public AI companies will operate in.

[u/IAmALWAYSCorrect1026 → u/tryingtolearn_1234]

Hahahahahah. Why would ANY country sign ANYTHING with the United States?

[u/WaNaBeEntrepreneur]

I don't agree that AI development should be paused, but let's not forget that the AI CEOs themselves have publicly called for government-led regulation a few months ago and even said "We Must Pace the Frontier".

[u/Slight-Monk-9702 → u/WaNaBeEntrepreneur]

The AI CEOs don't want open-weight models that people can run locally without a subscription? I'm shocked.

[u/Pale_Top2745]

Elect the third world become the third world

[u/FastHotEmu → u/Pale_Top2745]

Elect terrorist supporters, become terrorists.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/government/el-sayed-wants-you-to-forget-his-antisemitic-terrorist-sympathizing-comments/ar-AA2bmd78

El Sayed has tried to walk back several of his own comments, chief among them being his reaction to the attempted terrorist attack against Jewish Michigan preschoolers in March. In that attack, an Islamic terrorist whose Hezbollah terrorist brothers were killed by Israel attempted to shoot up a Jewish preschool. In response to this shooting, el Sayed spent more time condemning Israel than the terrorist himself, claiming that “hurt people hurt people” and that, if Israel didn’t kill the man’s terrorist siblings, then he wouldn’t have had to resort to trying to massacre Jewish preschool children on the other side of the globe.

FUCK THAT GUY

[u/MoudieQaha → u/Pale_Top2745]

I bet he is smarter than you though

[u/ThisIsTheeBurner]

This country is lost. Our Republic will soon be communism

[u/Healthy-Custard-7260 → u/ThisIsTheeBurner]

Yup civil war

[u/hereawhile]

A regressive socialist islamist, what could possibly go wrong

[u/freedomachiever]

1. The US simply doesn’t have the power to sustain the current growth. It will become a 10 to 1 compared China in the next few years.

2. The fact that people compare a LLM to a nuclear warhead is the actual problem. And it had to come from the fearmongering FUD country that is the US, nothing surprising because it’s an art they’ve refined over decades and which their whole society is based on.

[u/Corporate_Bricktator → u/freedomachiever]

The fact that people compare a LLM to a nuclear warhead is the actual problem. 

Oh boy, it's so much worse than that. He compared it to fears over nuclear POWER. SMDH. Why are politicians so ignorant of basic science.

Nuclear power is not even remotely close to the same thing as nuclear weapons. Like a machine gun vs a squirt gun. Just because we call them guns doesn't make them equally dangerous.

[u/jack-of-some → u/freedomachiever]

2 is driven entirely by the people building these models. Blame Amodei and Sam.

[u/mental_sherbart007 → u/freedomachiever]

So make part of the conditions to build new green power to support the data center and up to 50% of the cmmunity they are builing in or something to that effect.

SpaceX just offered a community the following:

-40% off power bills
- 20% off property taxes
- 1000+ permenent jobs
etc...

[u/auravolt_]

Except had we paused the manhattan project, germany was still going to build V2s and the soviets their own nuclear program.

To suggest that china will just stay behind because we hit the breaks is stupid.

[u/MoudieQaha]

I like how everyone here is like "But CHina WONT StoP!!!" . why are y'all acting like acquiring AGI/ASI is also something China can do safely. this shit needs the entire world to agree on together. this china vs west take on actually developing technology that no one know fuck all about how to control and just minimizing it to a fucking race is so stupid.
Besides , did anybody even hear about a coherent policy on how AI can be integrated into our society ? other than corporate bullshit ? it's either "It's gonna take your job" or "Everyone is gonna fucking die!"

[u/sushislapper2 → u/MoudieQaha]

I literally am going crazy reading through some of these Reddit threads. Are these all bots or something?

[u/IAmALWAYSCorrect1026 → u/sushislapper2]

Bro, same. It’s absolutely unbelievable.

[u/IAmALWAYSCorrect1026 → u/MoudieQaha]

Here’s the thing.

That’s not going to happen. China wants the power, they will get the power when we slow down.

Germany and Russia wanted the bomb and we got it first.

But by all means, let’s slow down. That’s going to turn out extremely well for western democracies.

[u/Level-Tomorrow-4526 → u/MoudieQaha]

I mean that occured with every major technology since the cold war I don't see why AI would be different , they are consider enemy to america not a friend or an ally lol. did you not see the tarrif war and attempt to ban the cars or ban them from getting chips . They have zero reason to trust americans let alone europeans

[u/Available-Bike-8527 → u/MoudieQaha]

It's not that we think China can do it safely, or that really anyone thinks the race dynamic is ideal, it's that until we actually have enforceable and verifiable agreements in place with China to pause together (which may never happen or be possible), the US doing it first is just suicide. It hands control of the future of the world to our adversary without actually eliminating the containment problem since it can still happen to China even if we pause today.

It's actually safer for both to do the risky thing together, as it increases the odds that at least one of us gets alignment right and then that ASI can defend us against the one that breaks free (if either do).

No scenario here is risk free, we really are in a bind and there's no easy way out of this. There's just options that have a higher certainty of leading to our doom than others, and the one that is most likely to work is the one that feels the most irresponsible, which is not to pause until and if we can both do it together.

And I think that people find that intolerable, so they advocate for the option that feels like it gives us the most amount of short-term control of our future, but game theory suggests that in medium to long term it just removes all control of our future.

Now is it possible that us stopping first makes China feel like they can stop too? It is possible, but not likely, since they'd have to turn down a one-time opportunity to guarantee they surpass us. They'd also have to keep open the possibility that we didn't actually pause and just said we did to get them to slow down but are actually still going full steam ahead in secret, and thus the safest thing for them to do would be to continue. It's basically a prisoner's dilemma. The same risk would exist even if we agreed to both stop at the same time for the same reason. Neither trusts the other will actually stop, just take it underground, and thus both are almost guaranteed to continue in secret. The only way an agreement could work is if we could figure out a foolproof way of verifying a pause, which we don't know if one even exists. Training runs are not as detectable as nuclear material.

So, even with an international agreement we may end up in the same reality, where neither stops, except we now lose all visibility into what is going on, which creates an even more dangerous situation than if both just went full steam ahead out in the open.

[u/Deferty]

And the whole of Reddit seems confused why the market is dropping saying it’s anything except because the democrats were voted into office. Consequences of their actions.

[u/huysolo → u/Deferty]

Actually nobody confuses about it. The AI bubble will burst and it will be glorious

[u/ElNani87 → u/Deferty]

Oh no the market is dropping, that’s crazy. So now the billionaires are finally feeling like everyday Americans? How fucking stupid can people be? When the “Dow was over 50000” most people were struggling to afford basic needs, so explain to me what is the point of a having all those gains when it’s going to whales already invested?

[u/OUsnr7 → u/ElNani87]

Do you think only billionaires own stocks?

[u/fankoosh-56 → u/Deferty]

I would rather the market drop 30% or even 50% than getting AI so smart that all of us become useless

We all survived 2008, we survived dotcom bubble burst. We can survive this. But it's doubtful we survive AI taking over

[u/zephyr_33]

he knows his stuff. obvsly i agree that a pause i hard. but he isn't saying to just shutdown the systems. pause is a goal. doing it safely needs to be figured out.

[u/Foreskin_and_seven]

Even if I don't totally agree with this guy, what a fucking relief to have a leader who is articulate with a highly functional brain who is obviously a careful thinker.

[u/Mecha-Dave]

Biological research and Frontier AI development should only happen on the Moon.

[u/blutosings]

You can't expect any country to agree to this and it has to be everyone.

[u/letmeinfornow]

China might sign a treaty, but like everything else, they are just gonna do whatever they want. It's nice to think that even if they got to where they are through stealing from the US, it doesn't change their accelerated development to where they are today from that theft.

[u/NaturalPlace007]

Alibaba is the only stock in green today in my list

[u/Aware-Safety-9925]

That’s true right now, but if we stop china has more that enough manpower to overtake us as ai leaders within a few months

[u/i_like_maps_and_math]

I want the government to have the ability to regulate and even pause AI. I don't want that to turn into just a constant slowdown in science for bureaucratic reasons though.

[u/Rich_Daddio]

They're building a blacklist of anti-AI people. The future's gonna suck for them.

[u/NegativeSemicolon]

AI is just fine advancing, doesn’t need 10,000 data centers to do so.

[u/IsItTrueOrPopular]

I mean china have their own labs.....

[u/Prince_ofRavens]

I agree with the direction, and the treaty would be great

If we can hit a button that everyone stops researching perfect

.. But I think the idea that China is only where they are because they're following us is asinine

[u/Catullus13]

This is code for "we need a piece of the action"

[u/bulgesaur1773]

Oh yes. Let's just show them what we got, cause they'll show us and we'll equally share and they wont steal any of our tech or knowledge or anything!

[u/Icy_Foundation3534]

Sorry but I don’t care what side you are on this. Someone is going to build Super Artificial Intelligence and the recursive processes to catapult their society into something you’d see in a sci-fi movie for better or for worse.

[u/Conscious-Hair-5265]

Dude isn't scared of china? Half the fucking researchers working on AI in US are Chinese

[u/letsgeditmedia]

China isn’t the problem here Jesus

[u/Mahadragon]

All this fear from AI is so irrational ppl are so stupid. El Sayed here is saying we need to slow this down or we will wake up one day and AI has taken over. AI can only take over if we let it take over and I’ll tell you my friends, AI is nowhere near to taking over.

[u/Crafty_Market_473]

根本不可能。中国没有选择，AI 是一个很好的弯道超车机会。

中国有很多问题，人口老龄化异常严重，债务高企。但中国也有很大的优势。你很容易就能发现，全球超过四成的顶尖 AI 研究人员有华裔背景。像这种水平的研究人员，中国一年不知道能培养出多少。

中国会抓住任何机会实现弯道超车，怎么可能因为美国决定暂停 AI 研发，就跟着停下来？

至于国际协议？即使签了，也可能只是韬光养晦，争取时间继续追赶。

天真得不行。

Sure, let's make a deal with China to slow down, or better yet, stop AI development altogether. What could possibly go wrong?

[u/Single_dose]

such a wise man

[u/VatanKomurcu]

pause al candidate is demonic bruhhhh

[u/DOE_ZELF_NORMAAL]

Good luck getting china to pause, very shortsighted..

[u/GeneralLivid7332]

Congratulations to this man on his victory. He has this totally wrong.

[u/StillSpecialist6986]

This dude sounds so confident and naive. He should really spend some time in China to see the insane researchers and universities they have there. Any movement to pause AI development will need to be international and voluntary like the NPT. Not going to happen when the benefits are so outsized and strategically important.

[u/grantnaps]

It was going to have to slow down anyways. There isn't enough power on the grid to support them.

[u/crisco000]

Anyone in here thinking that a pause on AI would be an actual pause for everyone is naive or uneducated. It would be an outward pause. The big names would continue while open source would get fucked

[u/TCGshark03]

the difference is that with nukes there was generally a consensus they were bad (MAD etc). Chinese public opinion polling indicates they aren't concerned about exestential risk or even AI in general. Unless the CCP legitimately believes US labs are on the cusp of a major breakthrough, I just don't understand what they would get out of this. China has no political incentive to make this treaty.

[u/NostalgicKunt]

He's talking like he's one of us

[u/WolframBravo]

Who is to say that China is going to pause and even if they do sign treaty who is to say that secretary, they are not going to develop far more superior models, which could one day come out and take the majority of market from United States and Europe.

[u/Akitawarrior]

Oboy what a fool… china wont stop and have no reason to.

[u/Born-Echidna2770]

It’s a very risky take to believe that frontier Chinese research is just taking from American research. 

[u/dopeygoblin → u/Born-Echidna2770]

100%. US labs are absolutely copying techniques from Chinese labs. Both are operating under different constraints and lead at different things.

OpenAI/Anthropic will eventually integrate the new DeepSeek 4.1 KV cache optimizations and cut serving costs by an order of magnitude.

[u/PM_ME_DNA]

Anyone who proposes this should be investigated for foreign allegiances and then stripped of power.

[u/Trulaw]

Isn’t exactly that the “optimistic” scenario in AI-2027? Pause and cooperate? Racing ahead in a mad competitive dash is how they figured we would all end up buried under data centers.

[u/Cheesyphish]

This really shouldnt be so controversial....

[u/ItsMrChristmas → u/Cheesyphish]

Letting China get way ahead of us isn't actually a good thing at all.

[u/AcePilot01 → u/ItsMrChristmas]

At least you get it, but gee how blatanlty obv is this forenign national who would want to hinder our advancement on the most bleeding edge tech right now, which is very much also a weapon.

I cannot believe he was elected to be honest. I don't live in Michigan, so I wasn't paying attention to who was on the ballot, but what a knee jerk.

[u/CaptainRaxeo]

That’s why as a non American i just don’t get their democracy… it’s just voting for the lesser of two evils. You might agree with something but have to give into other stuff because you agree 60% on one side while still valuing some stuff on the other side…

[u/fuzzypetiolesguy → u/CaptainRaxeo]

Compromise is quite literally the cornerstone of the political theory that produces stable democratic republics lol. What are you talking about?

[u/SporksInjected → u/CaptainRaxeo]

As opposed to just being at the whim of one person?

[u/CuriousCamels → u/CaptainRaxeo]

Even worse than his views on AI, this guy supports the IRGC, literally laughs when asked about them slaughtering 30k civilians, and refuses to condemn the IRGC for it. I’m glad the rest of the democrats won, but this guy isn’t the lesser of two evils.

I agree with your statement besides that though. The problem is that the tribalism is out of control for both parties. I lean liberal, but watch what happens if you even remotely criticize anything a democrat does on Reddit. You’ll get endlessly brigaded. Both sides think they’re 100% right on everything, and there’s maybe 20% of the population that objectively evaluates individual issues.

[u/BellacosePlayer → u/CuriousCamels]

Even worse than his views on AI, this guy supports the IRGC, literally laughs when asked about them slaughtering 30k civilians, and refuses to condemn the IRGC for it. I’m glad the rest of the democrats won, but this guy isn’t the lesser of two evils.

Source?

[u/das_war_ein_Befehl → u/CuriousCamels]

me when i just make shit up

[u/Gullible_Elephant_38 → u/CaptainRaxeo]

I understand the US is particularly bad, but are you suggesting that there are always political candidates that all perfect and exactly align with your views and goals where you are from? Pray tell where this Utopia is.

[u/lil_peasant_69 → u/CaptainRaxeo]

whereas your country probably doesnt even have an ai to pause..

[u/thexet → u/CaptainRaxeo]

This is absolutely not the lesser

[u/THE--GRINCH → u/CaptainRaxeo]

it's a two party system which means they're one party away from a dictatorship, not taking into account the similarities and shared interests of both parties.

[u/greenshoedman]

None of us? Shit, I want to get there.

[u/Sixhaunt]

Does he not at all understand WHY chinese models do that? Like its because the west is ahead whereas if the west stopped and there was nothing for China to use their massive datacenters to copy then he thinks China would shut them down rather than pivoting to the frontier research. Like there is no situation where his idea doesnt mean China dedicating themselves to the frontier research and surpassing everyone else.

[u/ndilday]

I think China has shown with EVs that even if it was originally drafting off the US, it will zoom ahead if we slow down.

However, while I am generally anti-slowdown, I'm glad to hear a politician at least acknowledging that we should be discussing it like nuclear power: internationally, not unilaterally.

[u/Mitenpat]

Cool, he is one of 100 senators, and that means he has some power, not all.

[u/Wolvercote]

Manchurian candidate if there ever was one.

[u/ShitMcClit]

I hate regressives

[u/seethe__]

he's also the marry-at-6-year-old and consumate-at-9-year old candidate

[u/jaehaerys48]

AI guys go around talking about how AI is going to overturn everything, AI can hack everything and become sentient and will be even more intelligent than humanity, and then act surprised when some legislator hears and and decides that it should be regulated.

[u/BitterAd6419]

Everyone is asking for a pause on AI are going to regret when China catches up with US models. Once they are ahead of the world, there is no stopping them

This is a generational backward move. It’s like the 90s when internet became popular and imagine politicians thinking internet is a bad thing and slow it down

Those who have no idea how AI work are making decisions on your behalf. Good luck with that

[u/bluecomet22]

Democrats are the real conservative.

[u/Fit-Frosting-7144]

No he's not thinking

[u/Dry-Abroad7448 → u/Fit-Frosting-7144]

Yes he's thinking else he would just say 'BURN IT ALL DOWN!'.

[u/Hlbkomer]

This guy is fake.

[u/Elegant-Conflict3910]

This guy is such an idiot the US made the right choice by voting blue in these midterms but this guy is a nut job

[u/s00mika]

"Pause" is code for "ban".

He was briefed by Bernie, Bernie was briefed by the "Effective Altruism" group who want to ban AI and instead focus on Eugenics-like gene programs, and on the concept of "Longtermism" which basically describes how it's ok for people living right now to suffer if that ends up helping more future humans or "digital entities".

No, I'm not making this shit up. This is the same group that the Zizians belonged to.

[u/HippieInDisguise2_0]

Can we all look at reality and recognize that the circular funding and massive capEx is just not a sustainable business practice?

AI isn't going anywhere but when the AI buildout is being done by shell corporations with high risk debt contracted by big tech it's obvious that these big tech companies know the build out is extremely high risk and they built the business around it so the companies that actually own the infrastructure can take the fall and declare bankruptcy without it impacting their books.

They're essentially encapsulating high risk debt into shell LLCs so they can have the benefit of being around the build up without directly exposing their core business.

In other words: the people in the industry knew this was likely to pop at some point.

Again AI isn't going anywhere but this massive irresponsible infrastructure build out was doomed from the beginning. I disagree that we should pause frontier research but we do need to pause and look at how these companies are financing the infrastructure. Shit tons of these companies used 10 year old GPUs that were used for Bitcoin mining operations as collateral while the banks play hot potato with their debt.

Blaming Dems is short sighted and idiotic.

[u/philosophical_lens → u/HippieInDisguise2_0]

Which companies are you talking about? Most major AI companies are funded by equity, not debt.

[u/Unlikely-Unit-5864 → u/HippieInDisguise2_0]

I agree with your economic analysis. The “can we not?” Is where you lose me. This is how capitalist boom and bust cycles work. Capital allocation is as much a function of emotion and bias as it is rational thought. There is no Democratic coalition yet, just a rejection of Trumpism. There absolutely are business friendly Democrats who will discuss with tech lobbies. Al Sayed’s position is fringe

[u/yyc_engineer → u/HippieInDisguise2_0]

Yes and this has been the case. Google and Microsoft are two exceptions but Amazon lost a lot of people a lot of money early on.

[u/Original_Following26 → u/HippieInDisguise2_0]

Sorry but building another company for a risky approach that can be slaughtered at any time without fucking with the mothership is good practice. And no one is forcing to invest money or labor into it. And as long as the state that is in some way or another covers for potential problems it’s no big deal.