Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said he believes the government should break up OpenAI, underscoring his concerns about AI’s potential impact on the job market and interpersonal relationships.
When asked by Axios’s Alex Thompson whether the ChatGPT maker should be split up, he said, “I do, but it’s a deeper issue than that. We need to take a deep breath and understand it’s like a meteor coming. We’ve got to be prepared to deal with all of its complexity.”
In the interview released Friday, Sanders voiced concerns about the “enormous transformational impact” of AI on the economy and the potential for “massive” job loss.
“I want to see us rebuilding manufacturing in America, but it ain’t going to do any worker any good if that manufacturing work is done by robots,” he said. “I want to see small businesses develop. I want to see creativity out there in the economy. Ain’t going to do any good for the younger people if the entry level jobs are taken over by AI.”
“I’ll tell you Mr. Musk and Mr. Bezos and Mr. Ellison, the richest guys in this world, are investing huge amounts of money in AI and robotics,” he continued. “And if you think they give a damn about the needs of working class people, you would be mistaken.”
Predictions about the impacts of AI on the labor market have varied widely, with some, like Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, suggesting it could wipe out a large portion of entry-level white-collar jobs in the next few years. However, experts have underscored that jobs data has yet to show the effects of AI.
“In terms of what it does to us as human beings, there are products now being sold as ‘You don’t need to relate to a human being anymore. You will have somebody hanging around your neck as your AI buddy,’” Sanders added. “In a country where there’s a lot of emotional distress, I really worry about that … how we relate to each other as human beings.”
The Vermont senator’s comments about an “AI buddy” appear to allude to products like Friend, a wearable AI companion whose advertising campaign in the New York subway has drawn scrutiny and sparked conversations about the future of AI.
Sanders separately voiced concerns about superintelligent AI, technology that surpasses human intelligence.
Several prominent figures, including AI pioneers Yoshua Bengio and Geoffrey Hinton and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, recently signed onto a statement calling for a ban on the development of superintelligence until there is “broad scientific consensus that it will be done safely and controllably.”
The Hill has reached out to OpenAI for comment.
