Bannon, Sanders Find Common Ground on AI as Technology Crosses Political Alliances

Steve Bannon and Bernie Sanders rarely agree on much of anything. But this week, the two are joining forces in D.C. over a shared concern: whether artificial intelligence is advancing faster than humanity can safely control it.But while the former top advisor to President Trump makes common cause with Vermont’s democratic socialist senator, both Mr. Trump and Chinese leaders are downplaying dangers and resisting calls to slow down the pace of developing AI.This comes after a weekend in which leading tech gurus from Elon Musk to Sam Altman to Anthropic founder Dario Amodei argued to “pace the frontier” of AI development — a phrase with little clarity other than “slow down” in development.In Truth Social posts Monday, the President rejected the tech titans’ warnings, going further to call their pleas “a hoax.”“Concerning AI, when in the history of business did anyone see the leaders of an industry call for regulation that, if strongly implemented, would drive them into oblivion and bankruptcy?” he wrote.It sets up a split between Republican allies in the tech industry like Mr. Musk and the Trump administration, with Vice President JD Vance dismissing calls to regulate AI as a “trojan horse.”“There are obviously risks to AI, there are some benefits to AI, I have to say that just personally I feel a little bit weird about the fact that you have so many frontier AI tech companies kind of coming to the government and begging the government to regulate them,” the Vice President said in Kansas City Monday. “So I think we just have to be careful about this.”The President, in a post on Truth Social Monday, dismissed Mr. Amodei’s calls for a slowdown as a “conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China.”For their part, Chinese officials have shown little appetite for slowing down their own development of AI. China’s Foreign Ministry said the AI frontier should remain “open and inclusive” “for good and for all.”“Fearmongering, confrontation and vicious competition will only disrupt the process of AI global governance, which serves no one’s interest,” a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry said Monday.The revelations seem to split the Republican party and even the President’s own MAGA base, with Congresswoman Ana Paulina Luna of Florida saying she’s drafting an AI regulatory framework with Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna.“Congress tends to lag, especially with the generation gap of members who don’t really understand it,” she said Sunday on CNN.Mr. Bannon and Mr. Sanders will unite Tuesday in an event set to highlight a “pro-human AI path that harnesses the benefits of technology while keeping the future firmly in human hands,” according to the Future of Life Institute non-profit, which is organizing the event. Attendees at the event are expected to run the gamut from actress Ashley Judd to Texas Republican Congressman Chip Roy to religious leaders.Mr. Sanders has proposed a law that would ban development of superintelligence, which he defines as a system that can “match or exceed human cognitive performance and capabilities across a broad range of domains or tasks.” His bill would also ban AI with “sufficient capabilities to plan and execute the disempowerment of humanity,” including but not limited to the overthrow of the US government.Attempting to overthrow the government is already illegal under Title 18 of the US Code.The split between American and Chinese views on the potential risks of AI may also have to do with different aims for the technology in the two different political systems.In an article published Saturday, Chinese Communist Party Secretary and Minister of the Ministry of State Security Chen Yixin acknowledged risks of AI – but first pointed out risks to the “political and security environment” that holds China together.“Various hostile forces and individuals with ulterior motives abuse generative artificial intelligence technologies such as deepfake audio and video, AI-generated text and images, and intelligent online trolls to fabricate political rumors, spread harmful information, and incite confrontational sentiments at low cost and in large quantities,” he wrote, “waging a propaganda war and a cognitive war against us, directly threatening our political security, institutional security, and ideological security.”It appears the Chinese are developing AI to serve their own state and security apparatus. And while the Chinese Communist Party says it believes AI technology “should be an international public good,” who benefits from that good may exclude nations like the United States.“Extensive international cooperation is needed to help countries in the Global South strengthen their technological capabilities and bridge the global intelligence gap,” Mr. Chen wrote. “Efforts should be made to promote alignment and coordination among all parties in development strategies, governance rules, and technical standards, so as to establish a globally recognized governance framework and standards as soon as possible.”Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called for a classified, all-senators briefing on AI dangers from the Trump administration.In a social media post early Monday, Mr. Altman outlined two ways that AI development could proceed “very badly.”“First, we could lose control of the future to AI,” he wrote. “This is unacceptable, we are unapologetically on Team Humanity, and AI must always serve people.”The second path, he wrote, could be a world with “too much concentration of power.”“If an extraordinarily powerful AI is used by one person or company to impress their worldview onto everyone else, the results could be extremely dystopian,” Mr. Altman wrote.

Bannon, Sanders Find Common Ground on AI as Technology Crosses Political Alliances

Bannon, Sanders Find Common Ground on AI as Technology Crosses Political Alliances

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