Senator Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon, a former adviser to President Donald Trump and a leading figure in the MAGA movement, called for tighter control of artificial intelligence on Tuesday, joining forces despite their opposing politics.
The two appeared together at the Pro-Human Assembly in Washington, an event organized by the Future of Life Institute. Bannon acknowledged that few people could be found more committed to the left and the right than himself and Sanders, but said they needed to rise above that divide, calling the moment a turning point in history.
Sanders focused much of his remarks on the concentration of power in the hands of major technology companies. He said the people of the country should be the ones making decisions about artificial intelligence, not a handful of oligarchs. Bannon used the same word, oligarchs, to describe the tech industry's wealthiest figures. Companies named in the report included Meta, led by Mark Zuckerberg, and the ventures of Elon Musk, both of which have invested heavily in AI.
Push for a federal oversight agency
Sanders is preparing legislation intended to slow the development of the most advanced AI systems. The bill would impose a pause on their development, create a federal oversight agency, and bar the most advanced developers from reaching superintelligence, the point at which artificial intelligence would surpass human reasoning and comprehension.
Sanders said artificial superintelligence posed a threat to humanity comparable to nuclear weapons and needed to be treated as such.
Under the proposal, penalties for violations would be severe, with executives facing up to twenty years in prison and companies facing dissolution. Sanders is also calling for a national moratorium on the construction of data centers, the infrastructure that AI systems depend on to run. The Future of Life Institute is separately pushing for a ban on developing superintelligence until scientific consensus can guarantee it can be built safely and kept under control.
Lawmakers, religious leaders and artists join in
Bannon's position puts him at odds with part of the Republican camp, which favors accelerating American AI development and opposes regulation that could slow the industry. He rejected the argument that calling for limits amounts to helping China, saying that framing anyone who does not support acceleration as anti-American and pro-Chinese Communist Party was the wrong way to read the debate.
The New York Times reported that the gathering went beyond the indirect face-off between Sanders and Bannon. Several Democratic and Republican lawmakers, religious leaders, artists and civil society representatives also spoke. Democratic Representative Greg Casar argued for banning AI systems that become too powerful for humans to control, while Democratic Representative Lori Trahan said the future everyone wants is human, and that this is not negotiable.
'When you're speeding toward a cliff, you brake'
Also according to the New York Times, Republican Representative Chip Roy raised concerns from constituents dealing with data centers being built in their communities and with the rapid rollout of technologies they do not fully understand. Actress Ashley Judd addressed the impact of AI on the spread of abusive images and disinformation. Catholic, evangelical and Mormon representatives raised questions about humanity's place in a society where a growing share of tasks could be handed to machines.
Sanders summed up his position with an analogy, saying that when you're speeding toward a cliff, you brake. Bannon said American citizens would no longer be supplicants to oligarchs. Despite their political differences, the two men defended the same core principle: decisions about the development of artificial intelligence should not be left solely to the companies building the technology.
