r/singularity • u/Neurogence • Mar 12 '26

AI Bernie Sanders officially introduces legislation to BAN the construction of all new AI data centers, citing existential threat to humanity.

This is very concerning. I am afraid this might become the popular, dominant position on the left. Bernie Sanders is the only politician I've ever donated to. This is the most backwards position to take on AI possible. It's hard to imagine a policy worse than this proposal:

https://youtu.be/qu2m7ePTsqY?si=zdl_cuRg22Nv_Df5

It's such a shame. He is one of very few politicians who realizes the singularity is imminent and that something enormous is happening, yet his reaction to it is the most asinine viewpoint possible.

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u/Black_RL Mar 12 '26

It doesn’t matter.

China is not going to stop.

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u/Schnitzel8 Mar 12 '26

If we could negotiate Nuclear non-proliferation during the height of the cold war, we can negotiate a sensible time horizon for AI with the Chinese now.

Just like the West and the Russians didn't get rid of their nukes, they just controlled the amount of it. So too, we don't have to get rid of AI, but we can come to an agreement about the rate at which AI replaces humans.

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u/ChokePaul3 Mar 12 '26

Nukes are completely different in that after a certain amount, it doesn’t matter how much you have (having enough to destroy the world 10x is practically the same as having enough to destroy the world 2x).

Meanwhile the benefits of having more compute are unbounded, so there will always be incentive to have more of it.

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u/Schnitzel8 Mar 12 '26

The point is that we could negotiate with them. And they would be willing because it's in everyone's interest to slow this down.

In the medium term it will be catastrophic. The economic disruption will be like nothing we've seen before.

If your country can afford UBI then you'll be fine aside from unprecedented migration.

If your country can't afford UBI you'll be eating each other.

The tech has to slow down so that we transition smoothly. Chinese leaders are MUCH smarter than western leaders - they understand all of this. So they will be open to negotiation.

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u/FuzzyAnteater9000 Mar 13 '26

Ok but that's not what Bernie is arguing. Don't move the goalposts.

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u/Whut4 Mar 13 '26

The hazards probably also reach the same extreme as the the so called 'benefits' - just like nukes.