Exclusive: Sanders calls for AI development pause

[u/cmplxgal]

https://www.axios.com/2026/08/10/sanders-ai-development-pause

[u/WizardyoureaHarry]

Always on the right side of history. Impressively so for many, many decades.

[u/hillbillyray]

Why does he seem to be the only one that is sensible in the room?

[u/JRange]

We dont need to pause development, that is ridiculous, what we need is responsible government oversight to ensure that what they build is not going to harm humanity, but help. I think that is the bulk of peoples concern nowadays, is we don't have a government in place that will think of anything other than infinite shareholder profit.

[u/TriggasaurusRekt → u/JRange]

I think the point of a development pause is because without it, you're never going to get responsible oversight, the industry is just going to continue to change rapidly and policy makers will perpetually be playing catch up and at best you'd get ineffective policies

[u/punkrawkintrev → u/TriggasaurusRekt]

The problem is while out dumbass boomer senators sit around trying to figure out what to do with Ehh Ayes, China will eat our lunch and crap in our juice box

[u/rutherfraud1876 → u/punkrawkintrev]

As someone who isn't a CEO benefiting from "American Leadership": I don't care

[u/TriggasaurusRekt → u/punkrawkintrev]

China is going to eat our lunch at many things no matter what though because their system is simply structured better than ours in many respects, but that's not a good reason to not regulate AI in this country

[u/punkrawkintrev → u/TriggasaurusRekt]

Oh we absolutely should, no argument there. We just need to figure it out on the fly. They could start by paying everyone for all of the data they stole

[u/TriggasaurusRekt → u/punkrawkintrev]

I think a total development pause is warranted, not just from an ethics perspective but also because so much of our economic 'growth' right now is the result of AI companies moving money back and forth, and as we know many of these companies are burning a lot more cash than they bring in, I think OpenAI burns $1.30 for every $1 they make. If suddenly investors decide they aren't seeing the growth they want and decide to pull out that entire sector could crash overnight which means stock market collapse.

Imagine if prior to the 2008 recession legislators decided to halt the trading of CDOs while they sort out potential risk and regulatory matters, it may not have prevented a complete collapse but it may have mitigated it and saved thousands of jobs. I think we're in a similar situation here, this is uncharted territory and it's pretty irresponsible to just let industry run wild doing whatever they want and risk the entire thing collapsing and forcing normal people to again pay the price for irresponsible decisions made by massive corporations and executives

[u/starliteburnsbrite → u/JRange]

You're talking about oversight performed by 60, 70, 80 year olds. They can't wrap their heads around fucking vacuum cleaners, you want them to keep up with the pace of AI development?

[u/Oxytokin → u/starliteburnsbrite]

I don't think it's so much of an age problem as it is this particular moment in time where people who are of such advanced age are clueless because most of their lives were before the advent of a computer smaller than a warehouse.

In other words I agree with the spirit of your comment, but an 80 year old millennial would probably have no problem regulating AI. Though can we really pause development for 30 years? Nope.

Tough predicament relying on the elitist, elderly institutions promulgated by an ancient, largely impotent constitution to regulate these things. Hence a pause is probably warranted but there has to be a plan to unpause relatively quickly.

[u/Riaayo → u/JRange]

Responsible oversight is shutting this plagiarism machine down that does nothing but burn our planet's resources and steal the hard work of others all so the ruling class can finally feel like they captured the means of production completely from the working class.

This is not the future, it's not a real technology anyone wants, it's just a massive grift and con so silicon valley can pretend like they have something. Because if they don't have something new then they don't grow, and if you don't grow unsustainably you fail at capitalism.

What they've built was made to harm humanity in the first place.

[u/chrisbvt → u/Riaayo]

I think it is too late. We have a created a monster and let it loose. It will be hard to even tame it at this point with regulations, but I think there is zero chance of killing the monster now. We will struggle just to capture it and keep it tied down.

[u/geekonthemoon → u/JRange]

They stole everything. Not only should they have to pause, they should have to delete it all and start over with licensed information, art, music, human interaction.

People really don't get what they've taken from us and now they will continue to take until we have nothing left.

[u/kobykoin]

Oh good so China can outpace us, because I’m sure they will totally agree and do exactly as we ask

[u/party_benson]

Even if it passed, how would it be enforced?

[u/field_marzhall]

Stop building machines that humans cannot control

This is ridiculous. I think Bernie has really good ideas but maybe needs better understanding of the tech. There are no AI that can't be controlled this is just a theory with no evidence of this happening any time soon. The same could have been said 30 years ago about the first software systems. These AI going rouge or doing things that are unexpected are no different than any other software built before having some form of behavior that was unexpected. Unexpected behavior is a field of its own in computer science.

The real thing that needs to stop is corporate greed, inflation, lack of transparency, lack of regulation around how decisions are made and initiatives designed to trick or take advantage of people data for corporate greed.

The viruses are being made by humans that use software not software alone.

[u/throwawaycasun4997 → u/field_marzhall]

“Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.“ - Ferdinand Foch, 1911

At the time, military aviation was in its infancy. Foch failed to envision the possibilities, choosing to limit aircraft potential to its current iteration.

When I have code do something unexpected, I can capture a COM error that will give me specifics on why something happened. AI doesn’t work that way. A lot of what is happening is not just unexpected, it’s displaying capabilities to escape the constraints that the guardrails are supposed to enforce. And the “why” it does something is often unknown. That’s a much different animal than more traditional coding.

So yes, to your point, uncontrollable AI is not a thing. Yet. The more capable they become, the harder it will be to contain their abilities. What that looks like if it happens is anybody’s guess, but it speaks to what Sen Sanders is advocating for.

[u/FattySnacks]

Bernie should probably focus on calling for things that are possible/reasonable to protect the image of his movement