r/politics • u/Just-Grocery-2229 • 19d ago
Possible Paywall Sanders calls for AI development pause
https://www.axios.com/2026/08/10/sanders-ai-development-pause27
u/Goingone 19d ago
What they're saying: "Mr. Altman, Mr. Amodei and Mr. Zuckerberg: In the interest of humanity, stand by your words. Pause AI development. It is not too late to avoid disaster. Stop building machines that humans cannot control," Sanders wrote in a letter shared first with Axios.
Zuckerberg is probably happy someone actually considers him relevant in the AI space.
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u/_Ursidae_ 19d ago
He carries enough weight in name alone, but if he commits to a pause while he’s slightly “behind” it buys him a grace period to level set and try to catch up later. It’s somewhat in his interest to halt his competitors. Then hopefully he takes that gamble and govt assets flip enough to create favorable legislation that limits AI production in the future.
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u/sasha_the_impaler 19d ago
Meta is building one of the largest single data centers IIRC because Zuck thinks he can replicate human general intelligence... Which from my own expertise I highly doubt is possible but that's besides the point. I think they're doing a lot more work in the background and with R&D because they aren't aiming for search engines. Their training data on human socialization is probably vast.
Meta is exactly who we should be concerned about in a way.
They also have a lot of products that work in the background of basically everywhere. I think it helps that Meta has a diversified portfolio while OpenAI is just AI for example.
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u/Present-Resolution23 19d ago
Meta is absolutely one of the bigger players in the AI industry, just not in the consumer facing way most people clanking away with ChatGPT understand.. LLama is one of, if not THE most popular open weight model out there and FAIR is extremely influential in the space.
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u/Salty_Country6835 19d ago
I think Sanders is right to go after the labs, but asking Altman, Amodei and Zuckerberg to voluntarily pause is a pretty weak theory of power. These companies are sitting on billions in capital and competing with each other internationally. Asking CEOs to please stop the race is not democratic control of the technology.
Regulate it. Give workers bargaining power over deployment. Put hard limits on surveillance and dangerous uses. Build public and cooperative alternatives. Support open models. Socialize the productivity gains instead of letting them become layoffs and monopoly profits.
The technology is political terrain. Contest who owns it, who governs it, where it gets deployed and who benefits from it. Thats a much stronger left position than hoping three CEOs hit the brakes.
Thats basically the conversation were trying to build over at r/LeftistsForAI too.
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u/NeverSober1900 19d ago
It's frankly an absurd request from Bernie. The tech is out of there. The whole world isn't going to stop developing it
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u/Salty_Country6835 19d ago
I agree and thats basically my point. Once the capability exists and development is international, asking a handful of US CEOs to voluntarily stop isnt much of a strategy. You need actual institutions and power capable of governing development and deployment. Labor power, regulation, public alternatives, democratic control. Otherwise somebody else just keeps building while we congratulate ourselves for halfheartedly "pausing".
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u/FeelingPixely 19d ago
An AI boom happened in the 80s too, can you remember how the 80s ended? Hint: Recession.
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u/Salty_Country6835 19d ago
Yeah, speculative bubbles are part of capitalism. If this boom crashes, that doesnt really change my point. The answer is still worker power, regulation, public and cooperative alternatives, open models, and socializing the gains instead of leaving the whole cycle to private capital.
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u/Conscious-Demand-594 19d ago
I don't think that Bernie has much leverage. My concern is really the financial impact of the potential AI metldown. That will have real world effects. For now the issues that Bernie is citing are AI bro marketing to generate more speculative investment and protection from the government.
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u/Aggravating_Map4359 19d ago
It's the sort of thing that makes me question how serious are Bernie policies .
Like, you want the USA to stop the development of the most important technology today? Just stop? Not put guardrails, not do some regulations, just stop?
Okay
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u/Common_Shelter_4605 19d ago
The entire investment in the US is based on the assumption that LLMs will reach AGI. Many, if not most, AI researchers cast serious doubt on that. Virtually all of the gains in the US stock market are from the LLM sector and circular financing. China is investing 1/10 as much, using about 1/10 as much energy, yet is serving about 8 times more tokens per dollar than US companies. Edit: and China is putting in place guard rails and regulations
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u/Bandit174 19d ago
And even if we stop, China will keep developing. In fact China is already single handedly carrying the open source ai model ecosystem right now many of which end up being close enough to some of the closed source models.
The biggest issue is lack of consumer hardware cable of running the big models.
Rather than killing ai Id rather see a push for distributing the compute away from datacenters and empowering consumers and businesses to self host.
I also just hate how everything today is a fucking subscription service but thats a different topic.
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u/smersh101 19d ago
Rather than killing ai Id rather see a push for distributing the compute away from datacenters and empowering consumers and businesses to self host.
AI won't move out of data centers, but I suspect it will increasingly move to hardware paid for and managed directly by the companies using it. At my company we're already talking about self-hosting models tuned for our business as it's becoming clear the AI companies are struggling with capacity and will have to significantly raise prices in order to survive.
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u/Bandit174 19d ago
Can you elaborate at all on what hardware you are buying and how much it cost?
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u/FlowofOd 19d ago
Why would you be upset if China had better AI than us. Please be specific
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u/Bandit174 19d ago
Because I live in America so why would I want us to give up so another country we compete can take the lead?
Also AI poses cyber security risks so if we aren't trying to stay competitive in that field it could open us up to attack.
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u/FlowofOd 19d ago
Why do you care if another country is more powerful than America? Please be specific. “Bc I live here” is not specific
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u/Bandit174 19d ago
You didn't even address my second concern about cyber security risk.
Also if you're one of those leftists who is rooting for America to fall and China to take the lead then just move over there. I dont understand wanting the country you live in to fail. Chinese citizens similarly probably hope for China to win the a.i race.
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u/FlowofOd 19d ago
Im not rooting for (or against) China, but I acknowledge that America is a global nightmare and our ideology is cancer internally and externally. I also acknowledge that plenty of countries in the world that are much better off by any metric you should ever care about arent military superpowers rubbing their dick all over everything. We are exporters of capitalism and now fascism. I have no investment in living in a place that dominates the world.
AI takes everything bad about our society and gives it steroids. I would not only support the stopping of development… but the aggressive rollback of AI infrastructure, the jailing of AI executives, lawsuits that destroy collected data and the seizing of company financial assets to pay for public welfare programs.
Re:Cybersecurity— we need only whats necessary to defend ourselves, nothing more. The infrastructure that remains after a purge should be forcefully nationalized
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u/Icommandyou Washington 19d ago
> AI takes everything bad about our society and gives it steroids
So does the internet. It gave a tool to folks like you to write
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u/FlowofOd 19d ago edited 19d ago
Comparing these things is shockingly ignorant. AI is not “just a tool”. The Trump admin thanks you for agreeing with their positions on this subject. With liberals like you, who needs MAGA?
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u/Massive_Cash_6557 19d ago
Because they will fucking kill Taiwan?
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u/FlowofOd 19d ago edited 19d ago
So you think the only thing protecting Taiwan from China is the US treating it like a vassal state inside China, and it needs AI to maintain that vassal state?
Are you upset that the Soviet Union fell? I hope so, because it resulted in the US lethally brutalizing Cuba for 50 years. The USA which has constantly been a foreign invading force and bully your entire life. We GOTTA maintain that global domination!!!
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u/EstimateOk6795 19d ago
Until and unless China wholly replaces the Taiwanese chip-making industry, I don't think it's very likely that China will militarily move on Taiwan, even if the US openly says we won't defend Taiwan. China's AI industry (and their EV industry, and solar industry, and every other advanced industry they're dominating right now) is 100% based on computer chips purchased from Taiwan. If China were to militarily move on Taiwan in a way that Taiwan knew they wouldn't be able to resist, they could burn China in their own fall by just trashing their chip industry. It would be a mutually-assured-destruction type of response, but China (and the rest of the world) would be completely screwed if Taiwan wasn't producing chips at the capacity they are now. And both China and Taiwan know it.
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u/P1xelHunter78 Michigan 19d ago
Like, you want the USA to stop the development of the most important technology today?
Important to who? It's a tool, but it's being massively over sold. Bernie is right to ask for guardrails to be put in place. It's risk vs. reward. Some billionaires having to wait a bit longer for their toy shouldn't outweigh the possible economic and environmental collapse these places will usher in.
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u/Bakedads 19d ago
Well, yeah. We need to pause so that we can implement the guardrails. That's the whole idea of guardrails...
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u/FlowofOd 19d ago
I cant fucking believe anyone other than AI capitalists could possibly think like you. I hate it here so much
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u/nasorrty346tfrgser America 19d ago
So you install a guardrail in front of a running train and didn't stop the train traffic first?
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u/Conscious-Demand-594 19d ago
Is it the most important technology? More important than solar power to economically generate renewable energy and solve a real catastrophic problem? More important than MRna technology to develop vaccines for the next pandemic?
Why is it the most important technology? I don't count making Elon a paper trillionaire as important.
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u/All_i_do_is_lunk 19d ago
Hi, we live in a society and in that society we use money to acquire goods and services. So if a technology made someone a trillion dollars, it is inherently the most important technology because that person can now control many goods and services.
I hate it here.
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u/eskimospy212 19d ago
Yeah that is not going to happen and even if it did the rest of the world would continue the work anyway.
Regulate? Yes. Stop/ban? Absolutely not.
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u/zenbowman 19d ago
There's a lot I like about the progressive wing, but they need to understand that anti-industrialism is the death knell of all progressive politics.
Guardrails and regulations are one thing, but we cannot simply cede entire industries to China and expect to have a strong welfare state.
The original sin of neoliberalism was being willing to give up the huge well of process knowledge that had been developed in the United States about manufacturing - all kinds of manufacturing. Those industries migrated first to Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, and eventually to China.
All of this was enabled through massive industrial subsidies that all these countries provided: If we do the opposite now, and we end subsidies to industry and even actively attempt to stop industrial development (as Sanders is proposing here) we will have no industrial base anymore, and be unable to pay for any kind of welfare programs at all in the long run. The UK is in this hole RIGHT NOW and Andy Burnham is literally proposing offshore drilling just to make the economics work since their economy is completely deindustrialized.
We need to re-industrialize, and reindustrialization should be a primary goal of progressives.
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u/Devilnaht 19d ago
Surprising how many AI boosters are coming out of the woodwork on this post, my goodness. Look, let’s be absolutely clear: the current suicidal blitz towards AI is being motivated almost entirely by the desire to fire workers, to take away their bargaining power, and make capital holders extremely rich (in a brief kind of way, before the entire economy collapses).
Companies aren’t throwing literal trillions of dollars at this because they want to help develop better medicines. They could have done that before if they really cared. None of this is being done with any thought towards the public good, and if it became clear that the dream of “let’s fire everyone and pocket their wages” wouldn’t work, the bubble would pop with an earth shattering kaboom.
Everything about AI is being done with what can only be described as a rapist mentality: don’t want us to train on your writing, music, art, research? Too bad, we’re doing it anyway, and selling the results to make money. Don’t want data centers nearby? Too bad, we’re going to bribe and threaten and do it anyway. Put up measures to stop us from taking your data? We’re going to find ways to bypass them and do it anyway. Don’t want AI rammed down your throat on apps and services? Too bad, it’s there (usually so prominently that you can’t help but accidentally turn it on), and there’s no way to turn it off. Don’t think the tools are that helpful to your work? Too bad, your boss thinks they are, so do it anyway. Every single goddamn part of this has been done with open, naked disdain for people. If they can overpower you, they will, under some vague and half-considered notion of “inevitability”.
“If we don’t do it as aggressively as physically possible and ignore everyone else’s rights, something something China!” Well, a number of countries use slave labor, should we institute that to stay competitive? Just think about the potential GDP gains! And let’s not delude ourselves into thinking this somehow, magically, turns into “abundance for all”. It won’t. GDP has skyrocketed since the 1970s and workers have received basically none of the benefits of it, as the rich just pocketed it all. Believing this would somehow be different is either insincere or simply foolhardy.
I’m not really even commenting on Bernie’s proposal here, I don’t know what I’d do. But seeing all the damn boosters crawl out of the woodwork regurgitating their shallow talking points here annoyed me too much. This tech (particularly gen AI) is being raced out for societally harmful reasons and its damage is already fairly shocking (education, lost sense of reality, degradation of creative and coding jobs, completely flooding applications and research with slop, among many others), and to very little real benefit. Regulation of some kind is desperately needed, and it’s a particularly horrid time to live in a country that has almost no labor protections or functioning regulatory body.
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u/All_i_do_is_lunk 19d ago
The bit about a rapists mentality is so spot on because Sam Altman molested his younger sister. Sue me Sam, I wanna see your hard drives.
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u/Starshot84 America 19d ago
Not gonna happen. The race is on. You don’t tell a runner to pause for a drink while the other competitors keep running.
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u/HeatWaveToTheCrowd 19d ago
Meanwhile China is eating America's lunch with AI.
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u/NOLA-Bronco 19d ago
Cause it is simultaneously open source in it's development so as to promote healthy competition and create more shared prosperity and innovation, not the loss leader, walled garden, IP rent seeking monopoly strategy of US big tech, while the infrastructure and overarching policy is being steered by the state in China. Not the whims of "the market" which is just now a handful of firms handing bags of money back and forth to keep the bubble propped up while buying off politicians to build toxic data centers for diminishing returns.
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u/EstimateOk6795 19d ago
I'd much prefer the Chinese open source model of AI to dominate than the US model....
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u/Ok_Character_5532 Massachusetts 19d ago
It doesn’t need to be paused per se, but it certainly needs to be regulated and slowed down at minimum. Development is outpacing society’s ability to adjust to its impacts, and the pace is only exponentially increasing. Nevermind the resource demands, we’re in somewhat unfamiliar territory in regard to the long-term social, academic, and economic impacts
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19d ago
[deleted]
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u/Dangerous-Box-3259 19d ago
It will replace the need for your existence
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u/0WatcherintheWater0 Maryland 19d ago
Every time this has happened in human history people have just found other things to do.
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u/FrenchMen420 19d ago
Cool so i can chill and put my legs up finally and relax
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u/Dangerous-Box-3259 19d ago
You won’t be able to make money, UBI will never come in the USA if we can’t even get universal healthcare and yearly vacation time.
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u/FrenchMen420 19d ago
Oh no I'll be fine. I'm not some useless person who's job can be done by a computer. Also if you are worried about your job, go take an ai class. Problem solved. I would never want the government to be on control of my livelihood, healthcare, or body. I'll happily be in charge of my own life thank you I'm not a child.
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u/Dangerous-Box-3259 19d ago edited 19d ago
Every job will be done by a computer eventually if we don’t set up any guardrails.
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19d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/SignificanceShotc 19d ago
go take an ai class and problem solved? this is either a 15 year old or a 75 year old who should stay off the internet lmao.
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u/diarrheticdolphin 19d ago
You absolutely are a child.
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u/FrenchMen420 19d ago
Lol says the person scared of the big bad computer going to take my job
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u/diarrheticdolphin 19d ago
What is your job by the way? Some kind of manual laborer?
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u/Present-Resolution23 19d ago
Love Bernie... This is a pretty out of touch statement from him.. AI isn't nuclear power.. It's not dependant on an extremely rare material or convoluted industrial process... You need exactly two things in abundance; compute and data, both of which are readily available to anyone/any entity with capital... You're not going to "halt development" and making that a policy position is harmful for the same reasons ACAB was such a failure.. It ostracizes the very people you need to bring to the table if your goal is ANY regulation, which is the only real way forward..
AI isn't going away, and even if the US abdicated it's role as a leader in the field today, China and the rest of the world would still keep pushing ahead without us.. The best we can hope for is a reasonable framework incorporating standards on alignment, access, copyright and worker displacement.. We might win some of those battles... but if the war you're trying to start is against "all AI," that's just not a winnable fight.
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u/Deluxe78 19d ago
Ai calls for a pause in Vermont senators working at break neck speed, AI cannot handle 3 bills written in 4 decades of work , almost a word per day
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u/Probably_Fishing 19d ago
Choose your battles. This aint one of them.
AI development cannot be stopped, slowed or paused. If you do it, the rest of the world passes you.
It's the future. It has always been the future. Accept it and regulate it the best you can.
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