Published on July 14, 2025 2:47 PM GMT
Most of the interview is about technological unemployment and AI-driven inequality, but here is the part where Sanders talks about loss of control risk (which Gizmodo put as title of their article):
Gizmodo: Have you spoken to tech CEOs or experts about this?
Sen. Sanders: I have talked to CEOs. Funny that you mention it. I won’t mention his name, but I’ve just gotten off the phone with one of the leading experts in the world on artificial intelligence, two hours ago.
Gizmodo: Did they share your concern? Did they offer any solutions?
Sen. Sanders: They’re all different. He did. Somebody I talked to yesterday, not so much.
There are differences of opinion. On several major issues. Number one: What impact will AI have on the economy? Some people say there will be massive job losses. I tend to agree with them.
Other people say not so much, new jobs will be created. It will be like every other technological revolution. Jobs lost, jobs created, not such a big deal. So people disagree. I happen to believe this is not like the Industrial Revolution. I think this could be a lot more severe.
Second point: This is not science fiction. There are very, very knowledgeable people—and I just talked to one today—who worry very much that human beings will not be able to control the technology, and that artificial intelligence will in fact dominate our society. We will not be able to control it. It may be able to control us. That’s kind of the doomsday scenario—and there is some concern about that among very knowledgeable people in the industry.
This comes after last month's House hearing about US-China competition in AI where multiple representatives on both sides of the aisle unexpectedly drifted the conversation to AGI and existential risk. As a decades-long senator and perennial presidential candidate, Sanders is now plausibly one of the most prominent politicians to have publicly expressed worries about existential risk from artificial general intelligence. I'm not sure who is the "leading expert in the world on artificial intelligence" he talked to, but this should be considered a positive sign that public outreach to and by experts in artificial intelligence is successful at bringing subjects that were well outside the Overton window five years ago to the attention of policy makers.
(h/t Thomas Woodside on X for bringing this to my TL)
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