Senator Bernie Sanders, a radical Independent [Communist] from Vermont, and Representative Greg Casar, a radical left Democrat from Texas, rolled out an aggressive bill Wednesday to ban AI. If they take back Congress, they will kill AI.
The 19-page Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act would require pausing advanced AI development until Congress creates a cabinet-level department of artificial intelligence, led by a secretary of AI, to regulate and supervise it. That will definitely kill it.
Violating the rules in their bill would come with a corporate death penalty, plus 20 years in prison.
Bernie’s scaremongering…
Bernie Sanders said, “It’s like building nuclear weapons.” But currently it can’t even get grammar right, so I kind of doubt we’re there yet, if ever.
It figures far-left people would do something like this and turn over the power to the Chinese, who are already ahead of us on some levels.
One of the things Democrats want to prevent is “recursive self-improvement”, which is an important piece of AI. Naturally, the media is very positive about this, or at least NBC News is boosting the idea.
Trump is scheduled to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping in Washington, D.C., which began last evening. AI was a topic of discussion, with OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Apple’s Tim Cook, Trump’s former AI czar, David Sacks, and others attending a state dinner for Xi on Thursday night.
Kevin Frazier, an AI policy so-called expert and professor at the University of Texas School of Law, commended Bernie Sanders and Greg Casar. For now, their bill will be dead on arrival, but it will be waiting on the shelf. Another Democrat who knows nothing about AI, Senator Maria Cantwell, is working on a bill with guardrails with questionable advisors.
If Democrats return to power, Cantwell will be in charge of commerce and AI, and you can consider AI dead on arrival.
Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has proposed creating a notification mechanism to alert other countries about serious AI incidents.
Republicans are discussing a kill switch should anything go wrong. Only Senator Rand Paul seems to be opposed because he wants yet another committee.
If Communist China wins…
Axios C E O Jim VandeHei said that China is obsessed with using AI to control the State domestically. They have been intent on “using AI for deep, widespread AI domestic use, so they can steer and monitor every level of their economy.” On the other hand, America wants to develop superior AI faster than China. The U.S. believes that true superintelligence wins it all, and we have to beat China.
China and the U.S. agree on three things: the country with the most powerful AI holds the power. It sets global standards and wins economically and militarily in the coming decades.
We now have Democrats like Bernie Sanders trying to kill any chance we have to do that. It’s fine with Bernie because he’s always admired China; he established one of the first sister cities with China.
Democrats were very supportive of AI until President Trump heavily promoted it.
China already leads in the “physical ingredients for scaling AI. They have the power, materials, robots, and cheap models people can actually use.” If they beat us, they will be well positioned to impose it instantly and roll it out across world societies. They’ll control us.