Sanders, Bannon share Silicon Valley critique despite China split
Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, and Steve Bannon, the rightwing former White House chief strategist under President Trump, each addressed the Pro-Human Assembly in Washington on Tuesday. The ideological adversaries united in warning of artificial intelligence’s dangers and demanding stringent guardrails against Silicon Valley’s “oligarchs,” while offering competing visions on how to resolve the US AI race with China — a competition Donald Trump and other Republicans have cited to justify moving full speed ahead with the technology.
Sanders called for international diplomacy and a global agreement, including with Beijing, to ban the development of super-intelligent machines. The senator noted that Trump is due to host Chinese President Xi Jinping in Washington next week and said he hoped Trump would use the meeting to negotiate such an agreement.
“A super-intelligent AI that escapes human control will not be an American problem. It will not be a Chinese problem. It will be humanity’s problem,” Sanders told the audience gathered in the ballroom of a Washington hotel. “That is why I very much hope that at their AI summit next week, President Trump will negotiate a comprehensive treaty with President Xi to establish a pause on advanced AI development and a ban on super-intelligence.”
Sanders drew a comparison with President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who sought to avoid nuclear conflict at the height of the Cold War and eventually signed a treaty that eliminated an entire class of missiles. “They understood that a nuclear war would not be good for the Soviet Union, not be good for the United States, not be good for the world, and they came together for a nuclear treaty,” Sanders said. “With the survival of humanity at stake, they found a way to sign that treaty.”
Bannon, who spoke directly after Sanders but did not share a stage with him, also used the Cold War analogy but did not arrive at the same conclusion. The host of the War Room podcast and former White House chief strategist called for an aggressive economic and technological “quarantine” of China, demanding the immediate expulsion of Chinese nationals from US research laboratories, an end to the training of Chinese engineers and technologists, and the total severance of capital flows between the two countries.
“Did our fathers and grandfathers, did they underwrite the Soviet Union?” Bannon asked. “Did they train Soviet Union scientists? Did they take Russian kids over here to college to let them go to the best universities and get the best degree? Did they have Wall Street slobbering to do their deals? Did they have every bank there to lend them money quicker than to lend anyone in this audience? The answer is they did not. They stood up to the Soviet Union and the first thing to stand up to them was to choke them off and that’s what we have to do today to the Chinese Communist party. No deals, no agreements, you’re out of the AI business because we’re going to shut your ecosystem down.”
Demanding immediate executive action to isolate Beijing’s tech sector, Bannon said: “No chips, no black marketing chips, no free ride off American technology, no steal on American tech … To hell with the Chinese Communist party.” Only then, he argued, can the US have the time necessary to consider proper regulation of the tech sector.
Bannon delivered a scathing verdict on major technology corporations and executives, accusing them of gambling with public safety for private profit while seeking to “socialise all the risk with the American people including potential bailouts.” “The American people are not going to be supplicants to these tech oligarchs,” Bannon said, praising grassroots campaigns that previously defeated federal pre-emption bills aimed at blocking state-level AI regulations.
Sanders criticized Trump and Congress alongside the concentration of power in Silicon Valley. “Despite living in a so-called democracy, the public has had virtually no input into the AI revolution that is transforming the world in which they live,” he said. “Congress, under both Democratic and Republican control, has been asleep at the wheel and we now have a president whose ignorance regarding this issue is truly embarrassing. Virtually all of the decisions regarding the development of AI have been made by a handful of the richest people in the world … whose chief goal is to achieve even more wealth and more power than they already have, no matter what the impact their work has on ordinary people.”
Sanders announced he would introduce legislation next week to permanently ban the development of artificial super-intelligence — an AI mind smarter than any human being — and impose an immediate pause on advanced AI development until clear safety rules are in place. Congressman Greg Casar, who is co-sponsoring the legislation, accused AI billionaires of deploying massive political spending to stifle regulation.
“Even as the threat becomes clearer, there are many powerful people fighting to prevent action,” Casar told attendees. “AI billionaires are spending millions through the Leading the Future Pac to scare politicians into silence. The top Republicans who control the House of Representatives are not lifting a finger.”
Casar added: “Leading in AI diplomacy does not mean waiting around for an international agreement on dangerous AI. Putting up guardrails now is the best way to show we are serious about getting to a deal.”
Republican Congressman Chip Roy expressed similar skepticism over concentrating decision-making power within the executive branch or tech boardrooms. “The president yesterday said he should be making the decisions about AI. I disagree. I don’t think big tech CEOs should be making all the decisions about AI,” Roy said. “I don’t think Congress should be making all the decisions about AI. If we allow technology to fundamentally alter and transfer and change the way we make decisions about our society and our Republican form of government, then what do we have left?”
The Guardian reported that Bannon has long praised Trump as a historic figure and endorsed his lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. On Tuesday, while arguing that executive action is required rather than legislation by Congress, Bannon made only a glancing reference to the president who has dismissed AI concerns as a “hoax” and “sick conspiracy.”
Recent surveys have found majorities of Americans worry that AI could be used to eliminate jobs, raise costs for families or otherwise cause social harm. Residents in several states have challenged proposals for new data centers, a critical component of the AI boom. The Pro-Human Assembly, taking place against a backdrop of growing bipartisan anxiety over AI risks, also heard from members of Congress, labor leaders and religious representatives.