AINEWS
At a Washington AI risk gathering the week of Trump's expected meeting with Xi, both warned that advanced AI could end human autonomy, with Sanders pitching a treaty and Bannon a 'quarantine' of China.
The "Pro-Human Assembly" filled a ballroom at the Marriott Marquis in Washington on Tuesday with nearly 300 people who came to hear a warning about artificial intelligence. They also got a fight about how to stop it. (NPR, Boston Globe)
Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Trump White House chief strategist Steve Bannon don't share a stage. They shared a day. Within hours of each other, both told the gathering that advanced AI poses an existential risk, and then offered the country two opposite plans for managing China, the country racing them to build it. (Guardian, NPR)
The Vermont senator invoked the Reagan-Gorbachev nuclear-treaty analogy and called on President Trump to use next week's expected White House meeting with Xi Jinping to negotiate a US-China accord that would pause advanced AI development and ban superintelligence outright. "Our fathers and grandfathers negotiated with the Soviet Union to prevent nuclear catastrophe," Sanders said. "We must do the same with China." (Guardian)
Bannon wants a wall. The former strategist used his slot to call for what he called an economic and technological "quarantine" of Beijing: the immediate expulsion of Chinese nationals from US research labs, an end to training Chinese engineers and technologists in American universities, and a total cutoff of capital flows into China. "Did our fathers and grandfathers underwrite the Soviet Union?" Bannon asked. (NPR)
Both speakers reached for a Cold War analogy and both used it to argue for opposite policy. One wanted arms control. The other wanted decoupling. Sanders said Trump would host Xi in Washington next week, and that he plans to introduce legislation the same week with Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX) to permanently ban development of "superintelligent" AI in the United States. Those are the only two decisions in the next seven days that would test either path. (Guardian, Boston Globe)
The coalition behind Tuesday's event is broader than the two headliners. The Boston Globe describes a cross-ideological mix of politicians, religious leaders, and grassroots activists who share a fear of AI but rarely share a stage. The Future of Life Institute, an advocacy group that has long pushed for AI safety measures, posted a "Statement of Shared Principles on AI" tied to the assembly, signaling organized infrastructure behind the gathering. (Boston Globe)
The gathering produced no operational answer. A treaty and a quarantine are not adjacent policy choices. One assumes the United States and China can agree on what advanced AI is, who is building it, and how to stop. The other assumes they can't, and that the United States shouldn't try. Sanders's bill, if introduced as described, would bind the United States without binding Beijing. Bannon's quarantine would harden the separation without changing what either side builds. The assembly landed a day before the only two decisions that would test either path.