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open ai
Sanders Makes Clear That He and Trump Have Different Ideas When It Comes to AI
"Do I have great confidence that Trump will do that right thing? No, I don't."
Jun 09, 2026
With President Donald Trump seemingly open to the idea of having the federal government take a stake in major artificial intelligence firms, Sen. Bernie Sanders emphasized on Monday that he and the president have two very different visions when it comes to regulating AI.
During an interview at the National Press Club, CBS News' Robert Costa asked Sanders (I-Vt.) to comment on Trump last week showing interest in the government partially owning Big Tech firms whose AI models could potentially disrupt American society in the coming years.
Sanders credited Trump with having sharp political instincts on the matter, theorizing that he understands the deep unease and anxiety that people feel about AI, particularly the fear that it could put millions of Americans out of work while benefiting Big Tech CEOs like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.
"So as a politician, I think that's where he's coming from," Sanders said. "Do I have great confidence that Trump will do the right thing? No."
Sen. Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders): "Trump is many things, but he is a good politician." pic.twitter.com/2iGu0kXZBa
— CSPAN (@cspan) June 9, 2026
Trump so far has only hinted at plans for a public stake in AI firms and hasn't released any concrete plans.
In contrast, Sanders earlier this month wrote an editorial for The New York Times in which he proposed creating an AI-based sovereign wealth fund that would impose a one-time, 50% tax on OpenAI, Anthropic, and other AI behemoths, paid in the form of stock.
Sanders argued that the wealth fund was necessary to "give the public a direct role in determining the future of this technology” and “guarantee that the trillions of dollars potentially generated by AI are used to improve the lives of all of us—not simply to make the richest people in the world even richer."
Noting that AI companies' large language models (LLMs) were only made possible with the inputs of centuries' worth of human knowledge and writing, Sanders said that it's only reasonable that the public have a strong degree of control over how such technology is used.
"When a public resource generates wealth, the public should share in that wealth," Sanders wrote. "The future of AI and the fate of humanity must not be decided behind closed doors in Silicon Valley. It must not be dictated by billionaires seeking to maximize their power and profit."
Progressive economist Dean Baker on Tuesday pushed back on Sanders' idea for an AI sovereign wealth fund, in particular arguing that it may be unwise for the government to create a wealth fund based on what might be a wildly overvalued asset.
"Most likely the AI sector is in a massive bubble," cautioned Baker. "An AI sovereign wealth fund is likely to end up being a mechanism to shovel yet more money to Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and the rest of the right-wing billionaire gang. We have already given this crew enough money."
Instead, Baker proposed handling the potential negative consequences of AI disruption through a mix of higher corporate income taxes, stricter antitrust enforcement, and shorter average work weeks.
"We have all the tools needed deal with an AI productivity boom; we just lack the political will to use them," Baker concluded. "The sovereign wealth fund idea is a massive leap in the wrong direction."
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The Lethal Killing Fueled by Open AI
We should all be frightened by this use of AI for death and destruction. But this is not new. Israel and the U.S. have been testing and using AI in Palestine for years.
Dec 22, 2024
Earlier this month, the company that brings us ChatGPT announced its partnership with California-based weapons company, Anduril, to produce AI weapons. The OpenAI-Anduril system, which was tested in California at the end of November, permits the sharing of data between external parties for decision making on the battlefield. This fits squarely within the US military and OpenAI’s plans to normalize the use of AI on the battlefield.
Anduril, based in Costa Mesa, makes AI-powered drones, missiles, and radar systems, including surveillance towers, Sentry systems, currently used at US military bases worldwide as well as the US-Mexico border and on the British coastline to detect migrants on boats. On December 3rd, they received a three-year contract with the Pentagon for a system that gives soldiers AI solutions during attacks.
In January, OpenAI deleted a direct ban in their usage policy on “activity that has high risk of physical harm” which specifically included “military and warfare” and “weapons development.” Less than one week after doing so, the company announced a partnership with the Pentagon in cybersecurity.
While they might have removed a ban on making weapons, OpenAI’s lurch into the war industry is in total antithesis to its own charter. Their own proclamation to build “safe and beneficial AGI [Artificial Generative Intelligence]” that does not “harm humanity” is laughable when they are using technology to kill. ChatGPT could feasibly, and probably soon will, write code for an automated weapon, analyze information for bombings, or assist invasions and occupations.
OpenAI’s lurch into the war industry is in total antithesis to its own charter.
We should all be frightened by this use of AI for death and destruction. But this is not new. Israel and the US have been testing and using AI in Palestine for years. In fact, Hebron has been dubbed a “smart city” as the occupation enforces its tyranny through a perforation of motion and heat sensors, facial recognition technologies, and CCTV surveillance. At the center of this oppressive surveillance is the Blue Wolf System, an AI tool that scans the faces of Palestinians, when they are photographed by Israeli occupation soldiers, and refers to a biometric database in which information about them is stored. Upon inputting the photo into the system, each person is classified by a color-coded rating based on their perceived ‘threat level’ to dictate whether the soldier should allow them to pass or arrest them. The IOF soldiers are rewarded with prizes for taking the most photographs, which they have termed “Facebook for Palestinians”, according to revelations from the Washington Post in 2021.
OpenAI’s war technology comes as the Biden administration is pushing for the US to use the technology to “fulfill national security objectives.” This was in fact part of the title of a White House memorandum released in October this year calling for rapid development of artificial intelligence “especially in the context of national security systems.” While not explicitly naming China, it is clear that a perceived ‘AI arms race’ with China is also a central motivation of the Biden administration for such a call. Not solely is this for weapons for war, but also racing for the development of technology writ large. Earlier this month, the US banned the export of HBM chips to China, a critical component of AI and high-level graphics processing units (GPU). Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt warned that China is two to three years ahead of the US when it comes to AI, a major change from his statements earlier this year where he remarked that the US is ahead of China. When he says there is a “threat escalation matrix” when there are developments in AI, he reveals that the US sees the technology only as a tool of war and a way to assert hegemony. AI is the latest in the US’ unrelenting - and dangerous - provocation and fear mongering with China, who they cannot bear to see advance them.In response to the White House memorandum, OpenAI released a statement of its own where it re-asserted many of the White House’s lines about “democratic values” and “national security.” But what is democratic about a company developing technology to better target and bomb people? Who is made secure by the collection of information to better determine war technology? This surely reveals the alignment of the company with the Biden administration’s anti-China rhetoric and imperialist justifications. As the company that has surely pushed AGI systems within general society, it is deeply alarming that they have ditched all codes and jumped right in with the Pentagon. While it’s not surprising that companies like Palantir or even Anduril itself are using AI for war, from companies like OpenAI - a supposedly mission-driven nonprofit - we should expect better.
AI is being used to streamline killing. At the US-Mexico border, in Palestine, and in US imperial outposts across the globe. While AI systems seem innocently embedded within our daily lives, from search engines to music streaming sites, we must forget these same companies are using the same technology lethally. While ChatGPT might give you ten ways to protest, it is likely being trained to kill, better and faster.
From the war machine to our planet, AI in the hands of US imperialists means only more profits for them and more devastation and destruction for us all.
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White House Deal for Voluntary AI Safeguards Called 'Great Step' But 'Not Enough'
Advocacy groups and experts are pressuring Congress and federal regulators to "put meaningful, enforceable guardrails in place."
Jul 21, 2023
Amid rising global fears about the dangers of artificial intelligence, campaigners and experts applauded U.S. President Joe Biden's administration on Friday for securing voluntary risk management commitments from seven leading AI companies while also emphasizing the need for much more from lawmakers and regulators.
"I'm very happy to see this modest, but necessary, step on the way to proper governance of AI. It is all voluntary at this stage, yet good to get these norms agreed. Hopefully it is a step on a much longer path," said Toby Ord, a senior research fellow at the U.K.'s University of Oxford and author of The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity.
Rob Reich, a faculty associate director at Stanford University's Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, tweeted that "this is a big step forward for AI governance," and it is "great to see" Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI "coordinating on baseline norms of responsible AI development."
"We need enforceable accountability measures and requirements to roll out AI responsibly and mitigate the risks and potential harms to individuals, including bias and discrimination."
Alexandra Reeve Givens, CEO of the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT), called the announcement "a welcome step toward promoting trustworthy and secure AI systems."
"Red team testing, information sharing, and transparency around risks are all essential elements of achieving AI safety," Reeve Givens said. "The commitment to develop mechanisms to disclose to users when content is AI-generated offers the potential to reduce fraud and mis- and disinformation."
"These voluntary undertakings are only a first step. We need enforceable accountability measures and requirements to roll out AI responsibly and mitigate the risks and potential harms to individuals, including bias and discrimination," she stressed. "CDT looks forward to continuing to work with the administration and Congress in putting these safeguards in place."
Caitriona Fitzgerald, deputy director at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), had a similar response.
"While EPIC appreciates the Biden administration's use of its authorities to place safeguards on the use of artificial intelligence, we both agree that voluntary commitments are not enough when it comes to Big Tech," she said. "Congress and federal regulators must put meaningful, enforceable guardrails in place to ensure the use of AI is fair, transparent, and protects individuals' privacy and civil rights."
Biden brought together leaders from the companies to announce eight commitments that the White House said "underscore three principles that must be fundamental to the future of AI: safety, security, and trust."
As the White House outlined, the firms are pledging to:
- Commit to internal and external red-teaming of models or systems in areas including misuse, societal risks, and national security concerns, such as bio, cyber, and other safety areas;
- Work toward information sharing among companies and governments regarding trust and safety risks, dangerous or emergent capabilities, and attempts to circumvent safeguards;
- Invest in cybersecurity and insider threat safeguards to protect proprietary and unreleased model weights;
- Incent third-party discovery and reporting of issues and vulnerabilities;
- Develop and deploy mechanisms that enable users to understand if audio or visual content is AI-generated, including robust provenance, watermarking, or both, for AI-generated audio or visual content;
- Publicly report model or system capabilities, limitations, and domains of appropriate and inappropriate use, including discussion of societal risks, such as effects on fairness and bias;
- Prioritize research on societal risks posed by AI systems, including on avoiding harmful bias and discrimination, and protecting privacy; and
- Develop and deploy frontier AI systems to help address society’s greatest challenges.
"There is much more work underway," according to a White House fact sheet, which says the "administration is currently developing an executive order and will pursue bipartisan legislation to help America lead the way in responsible innovation."
Brown University computer and data science professor Suresh Venkatasubramania, a former Biden tech adviser who helped co-author the administration's Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights, said in a series of tweets about the Friday agreement that "on process, there's good stuff here," but "on content, it's a bit of a mixed bag."
While recognizing the need for additional action, Venkatasubramania also said that voluntary efforts help show that "adding guardrails in the development of public-facing systems isn't the end of the world or even the end of innovation."
The White House fact sheet says that "as we advance this agenda at home, the administration will work with allies and partners to establish a strong international framework to govern the development and use of AI. It has already consulted on the voluntary commitments with Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, France, Germany, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, the UAE, and the U.K."
Gabriela Zanfir-Fortuna of the Future of Privacy Forum pointed out that the European Union was not listed as a partner.
As Common Dreams reported last month, the European Parliament passed a draft law that would strictly regulate the use of artificial intelligence, and now, members of the legislative body are negotiating a final version with the E.U.'s executive institutions.
The fact sheet adds that "the United States seeks to ensure that these commitments support and complement Japan's leadership of the G7 Hiroshima Process—as a critical forum for developing shared principles for the governance of AI—as well as the United Kingdom's leadership in hosting a Summit on AI Safety, and India's leadership as chair of the Global Partnership on AI."
Noting that portion of the document, Zanfir-Fortuna tweeted: "What is missing from the list? The Council of Europe's ongoing process to adopt an international agreement on AI."
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