A Call for Urgent Action on AI Safety and Accountability

One week after the election, Congress will reconvene and will likely take action on a number of unfinished – or unwanted – items. Let’s make sure Artificial Intelligence is on the agenda.

Friend, One week after the election, Congress will reconvene and will likely take action on a number of unfinished – or unwanted – items. Let’s make sure Artificial Intelligence is on the agenda. While alarms about human extinction have been overtaken by the impending elections, Congress had finally expressed interest in holding public hearings and drafting various pieces of legislation. But memories on Capitol Hill are short, so the pressure has to keep coming. That’s why we're asking you to write to your U.S. Representative and your two U.S. Senators and tell them the AI race needs a pause, and the public-interest—the common good, not private profit—needs to be protected. Tell them that the build-out of AI-induced, potentially extinction-level technologies cannot be left to a handful of billionaires playing God with the future of humanity. Tell them you expect them to establish advanced technical safeguards, including requiring companies to retrain models to delete dangerous nuclear and biological knowledge, keeping agents off open networks, and installing kill switches. Tell them Congress needs to enact a moratorium on new data centers, ban “superintelligence” models, and mandate third-party independent evaluators be embedded in all the tech companies. It is also important to expand the discussion. Tell them that Congress cannot continue to disregard the human cost of an unregulated AI. Congress must not focus solely on existential threats while ignoring the very present crises facing our workforce, our health care, our privacy, the natural resources of our local communities and the risk of cyber-attacks to our financial, transportation and medical systems. If Congress fails to act, the unregulated expansion of AI will result in the loss of millions of jobs. Because our economic system relies heavily on employment-based insurance coverage, these job losses will directly cause a catastrophic loss of healthcare coverage for millions of families. And because Social Security and Medicare are funded by payroll tax, the security of our seniors is in jeopardy. Artificial Intelligence is the most powerful, transformative technology in human history. While it offers immense potential to accelerate economic growth and uncover medical and scientific breakthroughs, it presents unprecedented economic, environmental, technological, and existential risks. So far, Congress has done nothing to prepare for or mitigate these and many more impacts on our lives, our livelihoods and our communities. Let them know that is unacceptable. Please join us in urging Congress to take action to protect our lives, our livelihoods and our communities. Take Action Thank you, Jane O’Meara Sanders The Sanders Institute DONATE Paid for by the Sanders Institute 131 Church St., Burlington, VT 05401 The Sanders Institute is a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization.   Sent via ActionNetwork.org. To update your email address, change your name or address, or to stop receiving emails from The Sanders Institute, please click here.