On September 10, the New York City Democratic Socialists of America posted a critical take on AI alarmism, sparking debate over whether to prioritize theoretical risks or current harms, with over 25,000 Instagram likes. The post, authored by the NYC DSA’s Tech Action Working Group, argued that AI alarmism and hype distract from real harms experienced in the present.
Some on the left question the value in elevating theoretical concerns about AI over actual harms. They believe repeating claims promoted by frontier labs about the dangers of AI empowers the AI companies, turning attention away from regulating the current harms of the technology and toward an impossible future.
"AI has become the latest tool of capitalist exploitation. The damage that unregulated and misused AI is already causing is clear across the country," Alan Dang, a member of Tech Action, told WIRED. As socialists, we don’t trust these corporations to craft their own regulations.
But others are following the direction of Senator Bernie Sanders, the unofficial leader of the American left, who has enthusiastically taken up the AI safety issue, asserting that AI has the potential to eliminate humanity. They say that it’s possible to address all harms from AI—both those happening now and those that could happen in the future—at once.
"The same people concerned about frontier governance and the development of superintelligence are also addressing those current harms," says Alexander McCoy, a Democratic strategist working on AI issues. "We should address all these other important factors.
Those frontier AI abilities are true and increasing in power. They are not fake or hype."
Over the past year, Sanders dove head-first into the world of AI safety, bringing conversations that were previously happening in Bay Area circles to Washington and his large populist base. His data center moratorium bill, released in March, explicitly linked pausing construction with the need to pass federal regulation to protect "the future of humanity."
Source: wired
