US Senator Bernie Sanders on Sunday escalated his recent criticism of artificial intelligence, explicitly linking the financial ambitions of the “richest people in the world” to the economic insecurity of millions of Americans – and calling for a potential moratorium on new datacenters.
Sanders, an independent from Vermont who is affiliated with the Democratic Party, said on CNN’s State of the Union that he is “very afraid” when it comes to AI. And the senator called it “the most consequential technology in the history of humanity” that would “transform” America and the world in ways that had not been fully discussed.
“If there are no jobs and humans are not needed for most things, how will people have the income to feed their families, get health care or pay rent?” Sanders said. “There has not been a single serious discussion in Congress about that reality.”
Just days before he was scheduled to help swear New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani into office and a democratic socialist, Sanders said that “the richest people in the world” were pushing the technology forward. He took aim at tech giants Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Peter Thiel by questioning their intentions.
“You think they’re staying up at night worrying about working people and how this technology will impact them?” Sanders said. “They’re not. They’re doing it to get richer and more powerful.”
Sanders also pointed to studies that show a reliance on AI chatbots for emotional support. “If this trend continues, what does it mean years from now when people are getting their support, their interactions, not from other humans, but from a machine?” He said. “What does this mean for humanity?”
That topic was raised separately on the State of the Union by Alabama Republican senator and co-sponsor Katie Britt. Legislation To protect minors from chatbots.
Proposed remedy – Guardianship over Artificial Intelligence Relationships (GUARD) Act – seeks to ban providing AI companions to minors. It also requires that AI companions disclose their non-human status and lack of professional credentials. The measure seeks to establish criminal liability if companies provide AI companions to minors that solicit or produce sexually explicit material – or encourage self-harm or violence.
Britt said she met parents who told her “devastating stories about their kids, where chatbots eventually, when they took everything back, separated them from their parents, talked to them about suicide”.
He said: “If these AI companies can create the most brilliant machines in the world, they can serve us all by putting in place proper guardrails that don’t allow minors to use these things, that also constantly tell the user that they’re not therapists, they’re not psychiatrists, ‘I’m a machine.'”
Britt said AI companies should be held criminally liable if they create spaces where chatbots are “making these types of lewd and sexual relationships with young people or encouraging suicide”.
Sanders and Britt’s comments represent a rare convergence of thinking from the left and right on aspects of the issue of controlling AI. Sanders said Congress needs to “vigorously study the impact of AI on our nation’s mental health”.
“I’m very concerned that kids will spend their entire day looking for emotional support,” she said. “So we have to keep a close eye on this.” The senator said lawmakers needed to “think seriously” about a moratorium on new AI datacenters.
“Frankly, I think you have to slow the process down,” he said. “It’s not enough for the oligarchs to tell us, it’s coming, you adapt. What are they talking about? They’re going to guarantee health care to all people?
“What are people going to do when they don’t have a job? What are they going to do, make housing free? So I think we need to take a deep breath, and I think we need to slow this thing down.”
