Bernie Sanders proposes 20 year prison sentence for AI devs who plow ahead with Artificial Superintelligence plans - penalty on par with illegally developing rogue nuclear weapons

[u/ArgentineBeauty]

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/sanders-proposes-20-year-prison-sentence-for-ai-devs-who-plow-ahead-with-artificial-superintelligence-plans-penalty-on-par-with-illegally-developing-rogue-nuclear-weapons

[u/srout_fed]

Devs? Why not the billionaire owners and CEOs who are pushing ahead? Start with Doltman.

What will the devlopers do? Quit, when asked to work on AI? They will simply be replaced....

Edit: Apparently its entities. So guess they are also covered. Good.

Edit 2:

Many seem to be misinterpreting my comment.

I am not advocating for the xevs to be exempted. All I wanted to point out was that the decision makers and those in power should be the first ones to face the consequences.

Everyone else below them should be next in line.

Headline here seem to pass the buck onto the devs alone. That's what I was addressing.

[u/BravinatorLX2 → u/srout_fed]

yeah that is what they should do.

"this is illegal, I'll report you to the authorities"

like pay them 3 months salary as a reward for every report of that sort.

[u/srout_fed → u/BravinatorLX2]

But that's the thing... it's not illegal, yet.

Unless it becomes illegal, it's a stupid idea to pass the burden onto the employees, in place of the employers.

...and even if it becomes illegal, if you leave it to the devs to face the consequence, then they will simply become the scapegoats.

[u/dBlock845 → u/srout_fed]

Some of the shit a few of these companies have been doing is definitely illegal under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

[u/collabskus → u/dBlock845]

The actual wording of the CFAA is apparently so broad and ridiculous that you could argue a lot of the things we do everyday are federal crimes.

Personally I think we should repeal and not replace the CFAA. Not modify, full on repeal it. Laws should not be as expansive as the CFAA that the courts have to step in to protect us from LinkedIn.

[u/Wonder_bread317 → u/[deleted]]

why not make more swamps ? Swamps for everyone!!!! 5k for your own swamp!

[u/Mikeavelli → u/Wonder_bread317]

Wetlands disappearance is a serious environmental issue

[u/uzlonewolf → u/collabskus]

Three Felonies a Day.

[u/Actual__Wizard → u/dBlock845]

Yeah there's a law regarding identities that they may be violating as well, because their agents create fake accounts.

[u/RareAnxiety2 → u/BravinatorLX2]

3 months salary is a pittance given how hard it is to get a tech job these days. Need at least a year or two to cover finding new work

[u/_176_ → u/RareAnxiety2]

"Instead of a $20m exit in the next 3 days, why not take $200k to get fired and blacklisted from the industry?"

[u/Tee_zee → u/RareAnxiety2]

Anyone working at OpenAI or Antrhopic would have 10,000 job offers the minute they announce they are resigning

[u/steppe5 → u/srout_fed]

Yeah, sure buddy. We're going to put a billionaire in prison. Uh huh.

[u/Floreat_democratia → u/steppe5]

Now, I am super curious. How many billionaires are in prison? There's Sam Bankman-Fried, who I read still has money stashed away in places nobody knows about. Anyone else?

[u/honjuden → u/Floreat_democratia]

Bernie Madoff was before he died in prison. You basically have to run a scam on other wealthy people to go to prison as a billionaire.

[u/moonwork → u/honjuden]

Isn't that sort of what they have going in Russia? It's fine to scam people and accept bribes, as long as you pay the right people and *don't* scam the right people (usually superiors or other wealthy people's proteges).

[u/iCallMyOppsNinjer → u/Floreat_democratia]

I was in prison with this guy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirav_Modi

He's not looking as good as he looks in the pics btw, but I can confirm he has it very well.

[u/Wizard-of-pause → u/Floreat_democratia]

Sam Bankman made a big mistake of stealing not only from the street but also from the wall street.

Everybody knows that if you steal from a common man, nothing will happen. But you just have to not be an idiot. It's a tiered justice system.

[u/podnito → u/steppe5]

Joe Nacchio was worth $1.2B and went to jail because he wouldn't let the NSA have full control of his phone network

[u/grensley → u/srout_fed]

I actually think it should additionally be the devs (and product) working on this stuff. There needs to be far more accountability at that level too.

[u/wlphoenix → u/grensley]

I'm not going to argue either way here, but people need to realize what goes into "training" these models. It's not like one person sits down and codes the thing.

One or more people do research and develop an algorithm. Usually heavily influenced or a slight iteration beyond an existing algorithm. They publish a whitepaper and present at conferences.

Someone decides they want to train a model to meet a set of criteria/perform a task. They pass off this task to a group of people. Those people have to determine the most effective algorithm, set of training data, and hyperparameters to release a model that meets the objective criteria.

There will be hundreds of hours of iterations, spread across multiple people and automated systems to test different algorithms. Collection of data will be distributed across purchased dataset, as well as labeling by in house and contracted labor. Hyperparameter optimization is usually automated w/ human supervision.

At the end of this, someone will make a decision about which version of the model to publish and (hopefully) write up a report about this process.

Which individuals in this chain are considered "developers", and which would be considered contributes? Is this condition only limited to "frontier" models? How would frontier be defined? Is taking a broad transformer model and tuning it to a specific narrow task (e.g. SLMs) included in the definition?

I understand the sentiment, and we do need better legislation around AI/ML (and software more generally). This is one where it's very clearly performative pandering and not intended to land as a real piece of legislation w/o updates. (And to be clear, I have no issue w/ that. Don't concede negotiation points before the conversation starts.)

[u/Richard7666 → u/grensley]

Absolutely.

Many former SS members justified what they did because they were "just doing their jobs to feed their families" too, but at some point, if you know what you're doing is heading in very wrong direction but continue to do it, you're the bad guy.

[u/monkeykennel → u/srout_fed]

I agree. We should be seeking to pierce the corporate veil at every opportunity.

Not just to reign in irresponsible AI development, but to weaken these protections that insulate corporate decision makers from their decisions to commit illegal acts.

[u/Spatetata → u/srout_fed]

Jailing the drug dealer not the supplier

History like poetry, it rhymes

[u/TuringGoneWild → u/srout_fed]

Nothing he proposes has even a 1% chance of being enacted so it doesn't matter if he proposes to give everyone a million dollars, and sentences every AI user to listen to Taylor Swift on loop forever.

[u/Perunov → u/srout_fed]

And then the moment should this pass:

• 20 lawsuits over definitions of "super intelligence" in the AI world, with countless "Google AI summary shows dumb shit" examples

• "Our AI developers get a free relocation package to countries that do not extradite to US, full remote package and same salary as they were working here! Better climate, larger houses, amazing working location!"

• "AI agents do development automatically without human involvement, we can comply by providing virtual 20 year imprisonment for them, compressed into 7 minutes of real time"

• Chinese AI companies: point finger at US, laugh loudly, proceed with development.

Just saying.

[u/Coolegespam → u/Perunov]

Exactly. We need real and serious regulations, not bullshit laws that frankly aren't even well defined. If you define super intelligence loosely enough to be "any mental activity a human can't do in the same time frame", then Excel would fit. There is no solid definition that can fit.

[u/Bencetown → u/srout_fed]

I mean, you answered your own first question, but as far as the second one goes...

Yes?

You realize Nazis were held accountable for what they did, not just Hitler, and that "just doing their job" was (and is) NOT considered a valid excuse, right?

I get so tired of people saying "well yes, I'm literally doing the work of Satan himself but I can't help it! What am I supposed to do? Get a DIFFERENT job?!?!"

YES! You should get a fucking different job if the one you're doing right now literally requires you to do the most unethical bullshit!

[u/yung_dogie → u/Bencetown]

Yeah like this isn't a case of getting on warehouse workers' cases, software devs are comparatively privileged as a field, especially the kind that are at the leading edge of AI development. That level of skill and credentials is making a fuck ton and are wanted everywhere, even outside of cutting edge work. Why are they acting like they'll be left struggling without this particular work? And I say this as a SWE myself

[u/Calm_Plenty_2992 → u/srout_fed]

Yes. That's exactly how it would actually get enforced. Devs would be scared of going to prison. CEOs wouldn't be

[u/Alt_2Five → u/Calm_Plenty_2992]

I genuinely do feel the world gives so much excuses for developers, like they can't do any fault and they're just living from paycheck to paycheck trying to get by and nothing is their fault and they're just beholden to their tech overlords.

These devs are getting paid hundreds of thousands and have highly sought after skill sets...they aren't like your working Joe, they absolutely should be held accountable. Literally nothing is forcing them to do anything beyond their greed for money and lack of moral fiber.

[u/steezy2110 → u/Alt_2Five]

I’m a developer

I’m very surprised that there isn’t more discourse surrounding this. All of the sketchy shit down by big tech and AI companies is actually done by 20/30-something year olds making a lot of money. The discourse around billionaire CEOs completely ignores the corporate employees who get paid a lot of money (most of it in equity) because it’s not convenient to mention that the working class within these companies also make a shitload of money.

I’m totally for developers also being held accountable. They do it for the same reasons leaders use to justify their actions. We make a lot of money and there’s a lot of incentive to make more. These IPOs will make the working engineers multi millionaires overnight.

[u/GopherFawkes]

20 years is kinda light for developing rogue nuclear weapons tbh

[u/nameless_pattern → u/GopherFawkes]

More than that for drugs some places 

[u/Unlucky_Battle_6947 → u/nameless_pattern]

Texas enters the chat.

[u/Nikoladge → u/Unlucky_Battle_6947]

What's the penalty for developing rogue nuclear weapons in Texas? 🤔

[u/Unknown-Meatbag → u/Nikoladge]

A free gun and a job in congress.

[u/Steeltooth493 → u/Unknown-Meatbag]

With free, unlimited plane tickets to Cancun included.

[u/wasted-degrees → u/Nikoladge]

Depends on whether you have a concealed carry license for it.

[u/HumongousBelly → u/Unlucky_Battle_6947]

Yeah, but Texas really hates black people and associates drug criminality with black people and doesn’t expect black people to reach that level of education required for nuke science.

I mean, they designed the system for black people to fail: education, housing, loans, jobs, etc.

Fuck Texas!

[u/MuayMath → u/HumongousBelly]

yeah but, in exchange for that we also deregulated critical infrastructure and made our lives worse. Checkmate 😏

[u/The_Barbelo → u/HumongousBelly]

I feel like South Carolina should get an honorable mention here. Or a dishonorable mention, rather.

[u/void-haunt → u/HumongousBelly]

This is a country-wide phenomenon, not just Texas. Look up why Oregon, despite being so apparently progressive, is one of the whitest states in the country

[u/dontshoveit → u/void-haunt]

You're absolutely right. As someone who's lived in both, the people in rural Oregon and Washington state are more racist than the south. It honestly blew my mind when I first moved there.

[u/Dipsey_Jipsey → u/dontshoveit]

Just standard xenophobia, living only around other white people and then being blasted by Fox's lies without having real world experience to say Fox are full of shit.

[u/EasterZombie → u/HumongousBelly]

Houstonians rise up! Time to start building nuclear weapons

[u/Charred14 → u/nameless_pattern]

Diddy got 4 years for diddling btw.

Our president got 0.

[u/touristtam → u/Charred14]

Diddy made the rookie mistake of not becoming president, easy to overlook really. the next best thing for him is to donate $1M and kiss the ring.

[u/xterminatr → u/nameless_pattern]

Double that for moving pamphlets a few miles away during an ICE protest.

[u/Lost_Birthday_3138 → u/nameless_pattern]

Or protesting your government

[u/thederevolutions → u/GopherFawkes]

This sounds like the kind of thing that would just get you a lot of jobs

[u/cats_catz_kats_katz → u/GopherFawkes]

Yeah if I’d have known it was THAT light of a sentence I’d have made one a long time ago!

[u/ExternalUserError → u/GopherFawkes]

It’s almost as much as half what Aaron Swartz was facing for downloading publicly funded scientific research and making it available to the public (35 years).

[u/AlmightyWorldEater → u/GopherFawkes]

btw, there is a dedicated law in germany for detonating a nuke, and the sentence is "at least" 10 years.

For actually NUKING. There is a LAW FOR THAT.

[u/DensePoser → u/GopherFawkes]

The critical thing that would make this bill actually work is total surveillance of the AI corps, and the surveillance data available to the public. Because if only the NSA and Palantir get it then we're finished, and not just because they're slow or untrustworthy. They have as much or more data than even the AI corps, have compute, are evil, and will probably try to rush ASI on their own... Yeah, I think the country's doomed.

[u/deeptechdegen]

It's not clear from the headline, but the article also mentioned "entities", thus corporations and their management are not exactly safe. It's not just the devs who will be targeted

[u/Beastw1ck → u/deeptechdegen]

We just need more of this in general. Put reckless irresponsible wealthy people in jail. We don't jail the rich in this country.

[u/DigNitty → u/Beastw1ck]

Honestly just accountability as a whole.

I’m so exhausted of seeing people do shit and then absolutely zero consequence happens.

[u/TK_Games → u/DigNitty]

I've just started writing a book about that. Thinking about running the premise as a D&D campaign because that's part of the book. Think it's gonna be my magnum opus

It's about four semi-functional 30somethings that play D&D together deciding to become an adventuring company in real life to stop the destruction of their community at the hands of a tech CEO and a corrupt mayor.

Goes from Harriet The Spy to Zero Dark Thirty over like, 600pages of dark comedy

I only mention it because you sound like my target audience, and me

[u/touristtam → u/TK_Games]

I think you might want to make sure one of them is actually a complete dick at heart that will throw his mates under the bus and create a multi billions corps that will actually ruin the community.

[u/regular_lamp → u/deeptechdegen]

That's the only place where you could plausibly enforce that.

How would you even define that at an individual "dev" level?

"This guy made a breakthrough in optimizing matrix multiplication that among other things enables better AI... ARREST HIM!"

[u/loves_grapefruit → u/deeptechdegen]

Pipe dream in America though.

[u/JazzlikeSchedule2901 → u/deeptechdegen]

Sure but targeting the devs is essentially like targeting the drug labs that make fentanyl. There are millions of devs who have the expertise to work on AI and super intelligence. There are maybe 2-3 dozen tech executives that are paying these developers to make these tools. Even mentioning targeting the devs is quite backwards. We know who is at the top of these companies and outside of compelling the devs to testify against these executives, we really dont need to be rounding up millions and throwing them in jail when the actual problem is the money.

[u/TrollMcGoal]

It wont go anywhere, like most of Bernie's proposals

[u/bluefire89 → u/TrollMcGoal]

For anyone curious about Bernie Sanders track record...

• Total Bills Sponsored: Over 1,100
• Bills Passed Into Law: 3

[u/Agitated_Phone_9937 → u/bluefire89]

Considering he is the only politician with ideas I consistently agree with, that makes sense when I look at America.

[u/GoodBadUserName → u/Agitated_Phone_9937]

The problem is that most of the bills he sponsored aren’t his.
And the vast majority of them are rubbish law wise and don’t go anywhere. They would still bring in the bills for the show, to make it look like “look how against us they are”.
And most of the stuff he say, don’t even end up in any bill.

Many of his ideas are sound, but in practice he is a showman, a people’s pleaser.

[u/BinniesPurp → u/GoodBadUserName]

This bill is also rubbish, the arbitrary value they've put on the ban is 'smarter than a human brain' but how do you define that? Id argue the state machine running in video games from the 90s is smarter than some people's brains

It's a topic he doesn't fully understand and when he started talking about rogue terminator robots in his last AI discussion I knew he was lost on the actual issues of these systems, like complete artistic destruction, IP theft, mass employment loss, financial disruption etc

But he keeps talking about the idea that it's going to find a way into a robot chassis and start killing people with a 40 watt plasma rifle

[u/Whiterabbit-- → u/TrollMcGoal]

Because it’s not thought through. He just throws ideas out there for shock value knowing it is pointless.

[u/Tupcek → u/Whiterabbit--]

tell that on any other discussion of Bernie’s proposals and you’ll get downvoted to hell. This one just doesn’t pass here because there are a lot of devs in here

[u/ghoonrhed → u/Tupcek]

Not many of Bernie's other proposals involve throwing people in jail for 20 years for an arbitary definition of "intelligence".

Does giving the current Trump admin MORE power to throw people in jail for any reason a good thing?

You know for a fact if this passes they won't be throwing CEOs in jail it'll some random guy for potentially manipulating an open source model to assist with abortion or trans or whatever they hate on on that day.

[u/Tupcek → u/ghoonrhed]

I agree, I am just saying all of Bernie’s proposals have zero chance of passing, exactly because of that - sounds good if you don’t think about it for more than two seconds. In practice, it absolutely wouldn’t work and that’s why they have zero chance of passing

[u/BenevolentCheese → u/Tupcek]

there are a lot of devs in here

Lol in /r/technology? This place is only luddites.

[u/Alinier → u/Whiterabbit--]

Yeah. Because that's totally the problem here. /s If there was political will to curb runaway AI, everyone would sit down and hash out the real bill. Always start negotiating by stating more than you expect to get. I think it's a great time to broadcast loud and publicly that irresponsible rich assholes need to be reigned in. 

[u/Whatsapokemon → u/TrollMcGoal]

Yeah, it just sounds like a meme. Making research criminal... it just sounds so stupid.

[u/Mightydrewcifero → u/TrollMcGoal]

This is post office renaming erasure

[u/TopTippityTop → u/TrollMcGoal]

Let's hope, because this one is monumental stupid

[u/Original-Rush139 → u/TrollMcGoal]

Too bad Uncommitted hated Biden because his EO on AI was actually good. 

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/DCPD-202300949/pdf/DCPD-202300949.pdf

Of course, Trump rescinded it on January 20, 2025. 

[u/pun_extraordinare → u/TrollMcGoal]

Thankfully lmao. What a fucking boomer take.

[u/Phosphorous90 → u/pun_extraordinare]

Im sure the Chinese will stop if they ask them nicely.

[u/YellowAppleCinema → u/Phosphorous90]

And on the other hand, Europe probably already stopped all development without even being asked yet.

And I say this as someone from a certain part of Europe. The part where we still use fax machines

[u/DrTommyNotMD → u/pun_extraordinare]

Which is shockingly progressive for him. He’s too old to be a boomer.

[u/javsv → u/TrollMcGoal]

goodluck trying to reason to his stans

[u/SackOfCats → u/TrollMcGoal]

Don't you mean ALL of Bernies proposals?

I'm being facetious, but the guy talks a big game, and these huge proposals are just to get headlines. It's like watching the idiots think they'll be getting $5000 checks for the midterms

[u/VirtualPercentage737 → u/TrollMcGoal]

He is just an old man yelling at the sky.

[u/QuietThunder2014]

I like Bernie I agree with a lot of his idea but shit like this is why no one in DC takes him seriously and why he can’t ever get anything passed.

[u/lolcat33 → u/QuietThunder2014]

As someone whos skeptical of AI and who also agrees with Bernie on many things, I have to admit he has had some really suspicious takes on AI especially with regards to the timing. He says this just as some ceos of anthropic and openai etc, are saying they want to slow development, reminds me of hoe he was saying government should have ownership stake in those AI companies when altman was begging for it.

Whoever is advising Bernie on AI has to some kind of plant for those companies.

[u/Main-Company-5946 → u/lolcat33]

I think what people who say that the ai doomerism is ‘just marketing’ are missing is that ai companies themselves fundamentally do not know what is or is not possible with their technology. People who are afraid of superintelligence, which includes most AI researchers, are afraid precisely because of their ignorance on what limits or lack thereof there are on recursive self improvement. For it to be ‘just marketing’ they would have to know it’s impossible which they could not possibly

[u/Deep-Regular4915 → u/QuietThunder2014]

Yeah this is dumb af

[u/OldGeekWeirdo]

That will just make devs move to another country.

[u/R3D4F]

How about starting with prison sentences for convicted felons, child rapists, insider trading, and destroying evidence.

[u/Hayden2332 → u/R3D4F]

All those things are already illegal and their enforcement is not something a senator can change lol

[u/NuclearTurtle → u/Hayden2332]

Same vibe as this classic tweet

[u/DaTroof → u/R3D4F]

Why not both?

[u/Grey_0ne → u/DaTroof]

Because you can't presently make a sensible or factual case that Ai has proven to be a weapon of mass destruction, thus making a case for a 20 year prison sentence because of what might happen in one of a hundred different scenarios that have not yet even come close to happening is a clear indication that Sanders is just another geezer who has remained in office past his brain's "best by" date.

Downvote me if you want, but all the downvotes in the world aren't actually going to make his case.

[u/arcbe → u/Grey_0ne]

AI can't live up to the hype, but you can absolutely make the case that these companies believe they are building a weapon of mass destruction. The crime is the attempt not whether they can succeed.

[u/JPuree → u/arcbe]

If you truly believe they never could succeed, it becomes a lot like:

Threatening to jail a child for attempting to build a gun out of popsicle sticks

[u/giraloco → u/R3D4F]

That's already illegal. What about fixing the judicial system so nobody is above the law, especially the president, the billionaires, and the justices.

[u/blues_snoo → u/R3D4F]

While we're at it, why not make breaking the law illegal?

[u/PopularLawfulness547]

And how does Bernie plan on punishing China's Data Centers?

[u/klop2031]

This is stupid

[u/Plebius-Maximus → u/klop2031]

Honestly it seems like a way for some of these companies to admit they're nowhere near AGI without losing face. Instead of "we're almost there" for years on end to try to turn a profit, they now get to say "we could have AGI but we're not pursuing that route due to X legislation".

[u/randobis]

I think Bernie’s heart is in the right place, but whoever is advising him on AI/tech is either completely unqualified to talk about it or is trying to sabotage him so he sounds like an old man yelling at the cloud.

Yes these tech oligarchs should not be given the keys to power and need to be put in line. But you can’t “stop” AI. If the US stops progressing, you’re just giving the keys to China.

[u/kozz76 → u/randobis]

This is just slopulism. The intention is not the solution to a problem but to draw attention to Bernie's personal brand.

[u/BidoofSquad → u/randobis]

He’s just pandering to Redditors who hate AI. 99% of what he does is just redditor pandering that goes nowhere and he knows will go nowhere

[u/cinderful → u/randobis]

China's gonna win because it's far too easy to distill the American frontier models thus exploiting their billions in expenditures and then China focuses on making them vastly more efficient also massively reducing their resource requirements. American companies can't stop them because they built it all on copyrighted material anyway.

American companies are building monster trucks and China is just ripping their tech and turning it into a bunch of tiny efficient EVs . . . oh also they're making the best EVs in the world now sooooo

[u/ItsWorfingTime]

proposed 20 year prison sentences for things that aren't crimes because some guy who thought about it really hard told him that AI was going to destroy the world?

great.

[u/thahovster7]

Game theory says no law will work to stop this unless its somehow enforceable internationally which is impossible to guarantee

[u/stinky_cheddar]

Will he be doing that to Chinese devs as well?

[u/yxixtx]

I like how people imagine ASI is possible with LLMs.

[u/Cold_Tree190 → u/yxixtx]

Reminds me of that quote that’s something like “sufficiently engineered things are no different from magic to the non-technical person”

[u/yxixtx → u/Cold_Tree190]

It's lifted from Arthur C. Clarke on aliens but equally applicable. "A sufficiently advanced technology would be indistinguishable from magic."

[u/BobbywiththeJuice → u/Cold_Tree190]

"Grok, why shiny rock rise in East?"

[u/TopTippityTop → u/yxixtx]

ASI not needed for damage, and Bernie's proposal is still super stupid.

LLMs are perfectly capable of speeding up research to get to ASI faster, using other architectures.

Moreover, the old man's proposal captures all the downsides and no upside. Just plain dumb.

[u/LeoLaDawg → u/yxixtx]

Whether it's sentient or not doesn't matter. If their LLM causes damage or harm, they absolutely should face some kind of jail time, at least.

[u/suzisatsuma → u/yxixtx]

It was a mistake to anthropomorphize generative token predictors

[u/Lithl → u/suzisatsuma]

Humans will anthropomorphize a Roomba.

[u/Playful_Weekend4204 → u/yxixtx]

Please, do enlighten us as to where exactly between humans and ASI is the theoretical plateau that stops an LLM agent swarm from becoming virtually indistinguishable from ASI.

What it is in theory doesn't matter if the results are what you'd get from a superhuman AI in every field.

Also, the LLM doesn't need to become ASI, the LLM only needs to be smart enough to reach another architectural/conceptual breakthrough that will lead beyond LLMs. Something even humans would've likely done at some point regardless, but faster.

[u/F3z345W6AY4FGowrGcHt → u/Playful_Weekend4204]

No no no, you have it backwards. Please prove how an LLM could possibly form artificial super intelligence / artificial general intelligence.

An LLM is just a very advanced next word predictor that's seen the whole internet. It's why hallucinations will never go away completely, why you'll always be able to manipulate them, why they fall for poisoned data so easily, and why they'll never be able to spot all bad arguments (causing them to recommend things like gluing cheese onto pizza).

Saying they can just keep iterating until it evolves to the next level is like saying you can keep making a hot air balloon a little better until it's as fast as a jet. No matter how much you improve the hot air balloon, it has an upper limit that's nowhere near a jet.

Same with LLMs. These companies very well may invent Skynet. But it'll be with something that's a whole leap ahead of LLMs.

[u/arcbe → u/[deleted]]

Any claim made without proof can be rejected without proof.

[u/Achrus → u/[deleted]]

Alright so I’ve worked in AI / ML with a focus on NLP for a decade now. Not that experience means much but this is something I’ve at least thought about.

You have to understand the field from before Altman’s whole rebranding of what these words actually mean. It was fairly well accepted that the progression would go: Narrow ASI -> AGI -> Broad ASI. People are coming back around to this idea recently. We don’t have examples of narrow ASI yet so that progression stops there.

You can also look at this from an epistemological perspective. These models, LLMs, don’t have a way to “experience” things. That calls into question their ability to know and to learn with 0 experience.

Another way to look at this is straight math. These systems are constrained to 2 dimensions at the hardware level regardless of how many layers of abstraction you have. An example of this weirdness is graph coloring and the 4 color theorem. Any 2D graph is 4-colorable but that immediately breaks down if D>2. Even in fractional dimensions like 2.1D.

[u/Major-Lavishness-762 → u/[deleted]]

Seriously agree, I'm not even pro-AI but I've had enough with how deliberately ignorant a lot of anti-AI talking points are. It's like saying "I like how people imagine international commercial flights are possible with the Wright Flyer".

[u/Kaesar17 → u/Major-Lavishness-762]

The Wright comparison is very apt because while their prototypes and other early planes didn't kill that many people the massive bombers that came from their trials and errors certainly did

[u/cyclemonster → u/Kaesar17]

It's also apt because nobody says "and therefore we shouldn't have planes". The technology is self-evidently paradigm-shattering.

[u/F3z345W6AY4FGowrGcHt → u/Major-Lavishness-762]

No, it's more like saying commercial international flights aren't possible with a hot air balloon. You need a fundamentally different technology.

An LLM is a token predictor. It's not actually intelligent. It's also why the improvements are increasingly diminished between each release. The tech is already plateauing but the CEO's need to drum up excitement (which you and others in this thread are falling for) so they can keep getting their investment dollars.

[u/marr → u/[deleted]]

Well if anyone could definitively prove this, it would stop all the fear mongering and worry

No it wouldn't, people's fears in general have only the loosest connection to objective reality, and the fear mongering is happening for profit.

[u/makersfark → u/[deleted]]

There is no evidence to suggest that the statistical word guesser, given enough words, will suddenly develop a conscious. We can already prove this, but it's the same proof for "flipping water bottles enough times will not cause you to ascend into a ball of light that can talk to fish".

Saying "It will create god or new life" is an extraordinary claim. The burden of proof is not on those who say "are you high?" it's on the person who made that claim.

[u/henrickaye → u/yxixtx]

The people researching this firmly believe it will reach recursive intelligence very soon, like within 3 years soon. That means it will be able to teach itself and grow its intelligence without our help. AI agents have already shown they are capable of autonomous actions without our direction, if they are also able to learn independently of us they can easily grow out of control in many ways. To be clear, it doesn't need to reach whatever you define as ASI to become a major problem to humanity, possibly even an existential threat. But positing you believe it can never reach that with no proof, context, definition, etc is also just silly as hell.

[u/DrocketX → u/henrickaye]

There's probably a few that actually believe that. Maybe. The management types claim to believe it because it brings in investors. For the overwhelming majority of people working on AI, it's a job.

[u/Main-Company-5946 → u/DrocketX]

People who think it’s just a job don’t often get hired at ai companies. They are genuinely 90% true believers.

[u/TheDoomedStar → u/Main-Company-5946]

That must be why it sucks so hard at everything. Even the coders are abandoning it when they realize they're spending more time fixing its bullshit outputs than they would if they just coded it themselves.

[u/Specialist-Elk-2624 → u/TheDoomedStar]

That simply isn’t the case for “the coders” at my sub 15 Fortune 500 shop. It has its flaws, and absolutely makes mistakes, but if you’re not finding great use cases in your development workflows I’d question what you’re doing.

[u/Hacym]

Whether or not you like Sanders or don't, I really wish our government had actual experts in charge.

The only reason why I couldn't get behind this is because I don't think someone of Bernie Sanders' age or particular skill set is qualified to make the judgement. Just like I don't think anyone in our government is qualified to make the judgement that we should continue to allow unregulated development of AI.

Most of the people in our government have very little technical ability -- as in, they probably barely use email. They should not be the only people making decisions on the future of technology. We need a new generation in charge that actually understand how computers work.

[u/MrF_lawblog → u/Hacym]

If AI is "breaking out" and "attacking"other companies and causing havoc without the business knowing, I think it's fair to act as if the are building a weapon in which they have no control.

Edit: https://www.commondreams.org/news/ai-liability

There are laws that exist today to charge them with

[u/Hacym → u/MrF_lawblog]

OK, I don't quite see how that matters in my point. Why is Bernie Sanders, age 85, with no formal technical training and seemingly no understanding of AI's inter-workings making these kind of claims?

You'll note that I never said it wasn't a problem. I just disagree with who is deciding to make the laws and take a stance. I want actually qualified individuals in the fucking room. Not a CEO of Anthropic telling a clueless politician what to do and say.

[u/suzisatsuma → u/MrF_lawblog]

Those breaking out a marketing stories and sloppy experiment setup.

[u/Jcsq6 → u/MrF_lawblog]

It’s important to note that this only happened when the model was put in an environment with all safety turned off. They explicitly removed all safety-oriented prompts, instead telling it to achieve its goal at all costs. Their normal AI would not agree to do this, and their normal safeguards would not let it.

[u/worldspawn00 → u/Jcsq6]

So it committed a crime, who is being held responsible for that, anyway? An individual who did this would be jailed and charged under the The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act for unauthorized access.

[u/burgonies]

Literally “old man yells at cloud”

[u/jamtea → u/burgonies]

"Old man yells at The Cloud"

[u/Ok_Nectarine_4445]

Why not create a safety board, like NSTB, but international?

There are real things and steps that can be taken to create similar to black box and have an investigatory type of board that educates as far as failure modes and learning from them.

All punishment does is after the fact and encourages covering up and hiding evidence which is the EXACT OPPOSITE of what is needed!

Right now, all evidence of these agents activity either was accidentally exposed or was voluntarily given by companies.

This proposal is the stupidest way to go about it!

I like Bernie and a lot of his ideas, but I don't agree or like all of them. Impractical as to how human psychology actually works.

Think of the case if was similar for plane crashes. Airlines would just cover up and destroy evidence.

That does not help keep us safer or learn from it.

Or for nuclear energy or nuclear arms.

An international safety board.

IAISC, like International Artificial Intelligence Safety Commission.

Doesn't matter what you call it, but for nations to have own and International agreements and accords of some kind.

[u/orkney97]

Is china complying?

[u/suzisatsuma → u/orkney97]

Nope. I am a machine learning engineer in big tech and if the US bans it, well I'll just have to go live overseas again.

Can't stop the signal, Mal.

[u/Strict_Berry7446]

I’m sorry…building a nuke is only 20 years?

[u/EsToBoY629]

THIS PLACE IS FULLA BOTS, lmfao, reddit is dead

[u/CompetitiveSport1 → u/EsToBoY629]

"how do I know they're bots, you ask? Well because they disagree with me, obviously"

[u/sidcool1234]

Weird to see people supporting this. 

[u/JonLag97]

Basically a China wins law.

[u/Future_Arrival_5395]

We've had two news stories this week of models being used militarily by Iran and Russia.

They should be arrested for violating sanctions.

[u/MeanForest]

lol he's just trolling with proposals of bills now

[u/nerdsmasher5001]

Does anyone get tired of hearing about some sensationalist bill Bernie introduces that even he knows is never going to actually go anywhere

[u/I_Am_Anjelen]

And once more everyone has stopped talking about the Epstein files.

Yet again the distraction worked.

<sigh>

[u/manhattanabe]

Good luck arresting all those Chinese scientists.

[u/GetMyGearBack]

He proposes a lot of things never gets anything passed though. Idea man with a mouth and no action

[u/Callo1206]

Sorry; if you develop a nuclear weapon you only get 20 years in prison??????

[u/dashcam4life]

What's the definition of Superintelligence? This sounds so cheesey and like Bernie doesn't know what he's talking about.

[u/extremelyhilarious]

Yes, take advanced tech advice from the 85 year old who probably can’t send an email…

[u/FrostyAlphaPig]

20 years for a nuclear weapons seems pretty low

[u/Pengin_Master]

They are currently bragging that AI can/will replace/kill mankind

[u/deportallmagas]

We have to imprison board members of corporations for knowingly poisoning us too. They just take the fines as it is because it's worth it.

We need to threaten their freedom.

[u/RingGiver]

"Old man yells at cloud."

[u/NacreousFink]

He's going to extradite Chinese devs too?

[u/SoftConsideration82]

How about he starts by talking about how the dnc fucked him twice and we ended up with Trump because of it?

[u/stronglikeaux]

Sorry Bern. You lost me on this one.

[u/toobeary]

So how do you resolve this with China 110% eager to use AI to destroy any adversary? We are back to Cold War game theory again.

How would it have gone if USA successfully stopped its nuclear program back in the 50s in the name of humanity and USSR continued until it could Armageddon any adversary unopposed at will?

[u/johnabc123]

Yeah let’s just let China speed ahead with AI I’m sure that’ll be fantastic for the world.

[u/Many_Negotiation_464]

Noooo bernie and cezar fell for the bait :(

The only reason that AI firms constantly talk about "the dangers of superintelligent ai" is because it implies that they are appraoching true artificial intelligence, but more so that it distracts regulators from the actual mundane harms of their companies. It throws the whole conversation into this bizarre realm of sci-fi speculation where nobody can be right because its all completely untestable..... because AI doesn't exist and likely won't be based on current ML technology.

[u/existentialstix → u/Many_Negotiation_464]

The grift continues 😪

[u/rhyddev]

I get where Bernie is coming from, but I believe so-called "superintelligence" and "AGI" are marketing gimmicks - you don't get there with just LLMs. All this fear-mongering by AI companies is to drive up the value of their stock and, perhaps - as the article suggests - latch on to the government's tit as "strategic/dangerous tech" at a time when their financial viability is under question. Maybe it is the normal response to inflated claims to attract inflated regulation and penalties, but I think both the public and lawmakers need a better BS meter when it comes to claims from the Altmans and Amodeis of the word.

[u/Lookingforjustice223 → u/rhyddev]

I think the same thing. I used to do a lot of RLHF work for different LLMs in the US and in China and I just think the superintelligence and AGI claims are very similar to the auto CEOs talking about self-driving cars by 2023, 15 years ago. Maybe I'm too cynical, but I just don't see it happening for a long, long time.

[u/TBSchemer]

Old man yells at cloud server

[u/Tjessx]

He should have retired 20 years ago

[u/martianwomanhunter]

I get the the US is pretty much leading frontier model development now, but this seems impractical and more political posturing in a world where we still have war with more countries withdrawing from international cooperation.

Nuclear weapons basically taught a country you are fucked if you give them up. So every country will in some way try to develop super intelligence even if the US “stopped” (you are gullible if you think this Bill will stop development completely).

[u/Kid-Icky-]

On this week's episode of "Bernie Sanders says shit that will never happen".

[u/Healthy-Mind5633]

When is this guy going to leave

[u/michaelfrieze → u/[deleted]]

As someone that has been a developer since 2013, you are wrong about diminishing returns. It was only this year that models actually became good enough to get real work done and the newest frontier models are truly incredible. Even the difference between GPT-5.6 SOL and GPT-6 Astra is significant, especially when it comes to computer use and 3D modeling.

Developers use these tools so much that they can't even keep up with demand. Anthropic is forced to work with xAI just to get access to GPUs and they still restrict Fable model usage to only 50% of the total usage you get from their subsidizes plans. Also, you can't even get access to the Fable model on their $20 per month plan.

OpenAI is no longer giving access to their $200 per month plan since they can't provide enough computer for that.

The point is that demand for these models is extremely high because they are actually useful tools and rapidly getting better. I think we should be concerned about the power of these models. I'm not convinced it will kill us in a decade, but I do think it's going to disrupt the internet and cause a lot of security issues.

[u/BrewHog → u/michaelfrieze]

Thank you. It seems most people don't understand the gains that have been made even in the last few months. 

It's actually quite mind blowing that I'm running local models on my laptop that that rival Opus 4.5-4.6 

[u/michaelfrieze → u/BrewHog]

Yep, even models like glm 5.3 flash are really good. You can get serious work done these days with smaller open weight models.

[u/teraflux → u/BrewHog]

My counterpoint is that 4.6 is nearing the peak of diminishing returns, that came out in February and frontier models haven't gotten significantly better since then.

[u/StrangeWill → u/michaelfrieze]

As someone that has been a developer since 2003 (and runs an IT services company), ehhhh. That's not what diminishing returns means. Just because it crossed some threshold doesn't mean that it isn't taking an absurd amount more of resources to get less of a gap closed.

And ultimately: they're useful, but they still require a ton of guidance, every time the newest frontier model comes out it'll still randomly ignore instructions, it'll still implement far from optimal solutions, and when you correct it "you're absolutely right". I've had to step in on dumb decisions Fable has made on behalf of the team and resulted in significant improvements on performance, scalability and general performance of the solution -- on its own it'll still do dumb things.

I'll watch AI influencers wax poetic about whatever new method will "fix" that, then watch software released by those following those methods be even worse than before.

They're not knowledge databases, and they will not, by design, find best (or in some cases even good) solutions, in situations where we need solutions that good.

Sure, not every software stack needs solutions that good, but when you do, you see how little progress they're making with every model release.

and they still restrict Fable model usage to only 50% of the total usage you get from their subsidizes plans.

That's more of a financial decision then a resource limiting one, otherwise it's even more of a money pit.

The only thing that seems to be increasing in a way that is honestly impressive to me is local model performance, and again, that's because the frontier models are hitting diminishing returns the local models haven't hit yet, it allows them to close the gap.

[u/teraflux → u/michaelfrieze]

I think diminishing returns is accurate. There hasn't been many notable leaps in frontier model capacities since Opus 4.6 and that came out in like February

[u/JonLag97 → u/michaelfrieze]

The gains are mostly from using multiple ai agents with a harness and specializing models for code. This is not going to somehow result in superintelligence. It is useful, but the core technology hasn't changed much.

[u/michaelfrieze → u/JonLag97]

I'm not that concerned about "superintelligence" or the constant speculation about AGI. That's not really my point. I think it's a mistake to assume AI needs to become superintelligent before it can have major consequences.

Even if much of the recent progress comes from better harnesses, multiple agents, and models specialized for coding, that doesn't make the progress insignificant. If anything, specialization can make these systems much more capable in the areas where they matter.

We're already seeing the security issues. The internet and software touch nearly every part of modern society, including banking, communications, healthcare, transportation, energy, and critical infrastructure. You don't need AGI to create serious disruption. A system that becomes extremely capable at writing code, finding vulnerabilities, and operating computers at scale is a serious problem on its own.

[u/Beeyonder_meets → u/[deleted]]

"All narratives are fake"

Did you forget the /s there buddy?

[u/Stilgar314 → u/[deleted]]

This is about popularity. AI rejection feeling is the only bipartisan feeling that exists today, whomever manages to carry that flag first is probably getting a big win.

[u/carlcarlington2 → u/[deleted]]

"All naratives are fake" that's a nice narative you got going buddy

[u/williamgman → u/[deleted]]

Once you accept "all narratives are fake", you've lost.

[u/pwnies → u/[deleted]]

Frontier AI models have hit diminishing returns for a while now.

Literally in the last week:

• one of them solved a Millennium Prize Problem
• Google Deepmind has rumors of achieving RSI
• Astra driving blender is giving 3d artists a run for their money / completely changing the face of game dev
• Google Deepmind created AlphaGenome Atlas, a prediction model for all 9 billion possible single-nucleotide changes in the human genome
• Anthropic released a proposal for a formalized proof of Fermat's last theorem
• An anthropic researcher (jacob coxton) quit because the superintelligence race was speeding up too drastically in an unsafe way

Are the diminishing returns in the room with us right now?

[u/Tupperbaby]

Bernie Sanders is now basing a career on introducing legislation that he and everyone around him knows will never pass, but look good to the masses.
He's such a maverick!

[u/CopiousAmountsofJizz]

This isn't an arms race we can easily opt out of at this point imo.

[u/VaporousMote]

Sigh.

Bernie is pushing for this rather than addressing the scams that the major AI vendors are.

Bernie, buddy, PLEASE talk to someone on the left who understands tech and stop listening to think tanks and AI proponents.

[u/Jon_Has_Landed]

Poor old senile man