r/technology • u/ArgentineBeauty • 21d ago

Artificial Intelligence 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

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
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u/Hacym 21d ago

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.

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u/MrF_lawblog 21d ago edited 20d ago

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

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u/Jcsq6 21d ago

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.

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u/worldspawn00 21d ago

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.

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u/ChiveSalad 21d ago

No, they occasionally attack completely out of the blue, see the rubygems and perl wiki incidents. They also attack when all safeguards are turned off, more often.

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u/Kriztauf 20d ago

This is true. But the reason everyone is sound alarm bells isn't for the current models. It's that over the next year they expect that their engineers will start to largely rely on the current models to build the future generation of models since they're essentially becoming better and designing AI than humans are. The fear is that if the current models are misaligned, they will engineer future models so that these safety features can be turned off without us realizing it, and they will design them in a way so that these safety "off" switches are hidden from us.

Give the current acceleration of model capabilities I think this is a super valid concern. Idk why people just assume we can take the move fast and break things approach for this problem and that it'll be okay.