Bannon and Sanders railed against AI and the ‘oligarchs’ behind it from the same stage.
Artificial intelligence and the “oligarchs” behind the technology represent such an enticing political target that they’ve managed to bring Steve Bannon and Bernie Sanders together on the same stage.
Speaking at the Pro-Human Assembly in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Sanders and Bannon railed against AI as yet another tool the elite will use to enrich themselves at the expense of their fellow Americans.
“Virtually all of the decisions, regarding the development of AI, have been made by a handful of the richest people in the world. Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos, Thiel, Ellison, and a few others. whose chief goal is to achieve even more wealth and more power than they already have,” Sanders told the crowd.
“We’re not going to give these oligarchs carte blanche,” said Bannon.
As one of President Trump’s earliest and most prominent backers, Bannon’s choice of the tech industry as the nationalist movement’s Enemy No. 1 is revealing. Just as President Trump is embracing the industry and casting AI safety concerns as backward and self-defeating, Bannon is uniting with some of Trump’s most vocal antagonists against the industry.
Though Bannon, Sanders, and all other panelists made it clear that they believe AI has the potential to be extraordinarily beneficial to the human race, much of the discussion focused on the potential for catastrophic disruption and destruction.
Bannon and Sanders both invoked the disparate interests of the American public and tech CEOs, recycling the “us-versus-them” framing that both men wielded so effectively in 2015, Bannon on behalf of Trump and Sanders on behalf of his upstart presidential campaign.
“They’ve got all the money, they have all the power, they have every lobbyist in the city. They have every crisis communications person. They have tons of scientists and intellectuals on the payroll. Why is it that they can’t win?” Bannon said. ”Because the people don’t trust them. The people don’t trust them, and that trust is not going up.”
The skepticism extends to AI leaders’ recent calls for regulation, which Bannon dismissed as a ploy to smother competition. “All they’re trying to do is to use a crisis and turn it to their advantage, by creating a moat, a cartel, where not only can other aspiring companies get in, but more importantly, they want to socialize all the risk with the American people, including potential bailouts, when they come. And they want to keep all the upside,” said Bannon.
Both men are lobbying for government regulation, with Sanders’s propositions including banning artificial superintelligence outright (the lack of specifics around what constitutes “super intelligence” is one among many challenges to regulation) and pausing the development of advanced AI. Bannon, meanwhile, has argued for executive action to establish a regulatory structure (that he neglected to define) and to “quarantine” China to prevent the CCP from stealing intellectual property.
Bannon is joined in his AI skepticism by MAGA apostates such as Tucker Carlson and former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. Trump’s one-time boosters stand at the opposite end of the spectrum from Trump himself, who has dismissed existential fears about artificial intelligence (and the data centers that power them) as a “hoax.”
With the midterms looming, Republicans who are hewing to Trump’s pro-AI line have reason for concern: National and state-level polling shows Americans on both sides of the aisle growing more skeptical toward AI and more strident in their opposition to data center construction.
Texas, for example, was on pace to have the highest number of data centers of any state in the country by 2030 before Republican Governor Greg Abbott issued a moratorium pausing construction until an audit of all proposed projects can be conducted. Abbott insisted that he was just complying with Texans’ wishes, and the polling bears him out.
Nearly half of Texas Republican primary voters, 47.8 percent, either strongly or somewhat support a total ban on data center construction in their local communities, compared to just 41.6 percent who oppose a ban.
Even when they receive assurances that the data centers will be required to fund their own electrical infrastructure, use limited water, and prevent noise pollution, 45.3 percent of Texas Republicans would still oppose data center construction in their communities, compared to 47.1 percent who would be supportive of the construction.
Controlling for practical or aesthetic problems, support for data center construction remains stubbornly limited. Political entrepreneurs on the left and right, led by figures such as Bannon and Sanders, detect an opportunity.