AI Is a Threat to Everything the American People Hold Dear -- Bernie Sanders WSJ OpEd

[usonian]

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/ai-is-a-threat-to-everything-the-american-people-hold-dear-a3286459
https://archive.is/qs8Vw

More at The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/28/bernie-sanders-artificial-intelligence-ai-datacenters

If it's a dupe post, great.
This is so fundamental, like oligarchy, the elephant in the room that needs to be recognized and escorted out.

The American people understand that AI and robotics will transform our world. They want to make certain that this technological revolution makes life better, not worse, for them and their families. They know that fundamental questions must be answered before we rush forward. They don’t trust the AI oligarchs.

At a time of massive income and wealth inequality, people recognize the AI revolution is being led by some of the wealthiest people in this country. Billionaires like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Ellison are investing enormous sums in AI and robotics not to improve life for working families but to expand their own wealth and power.

How can we rush forward when AI could displace tens of millions of workers? Elon Musk has stated that “AI and robots will replace all jobs.” Bill Gates has said humans won’t be needed “for most things.” If machines can perform most economically valuable work better than humans can, how do people earn a living and support their families?

It isn’t only the economy. How can we rush forward when AI is already reshaping how we as human beings relate to one another? According to a recent poll by Common Sense Media, 72% of U.S. teenagers say they have used AI companions, and more than half do so regularly. What does it mean for young people to form “friendships” with AI while becoming lonelier and more isolated from other human beings?

Good reading.

If he posts or emails a full copy, I'll pass it along here.

[multigraincracker]

1. Tax every job AI takes and remove the

income cap on all earnings plus add a 5% wealth tax on the super rich.
You’d think the majority of voters could push those laws thru.

[usonian]

2. Legislators, when let out of their coffins, are addicted to the millions in bribes.

One theory says that UBI is just a bribe to the public to STFU about their complete subordination to and dependence upon mega-industries.

Tax the rich?

EAT THE RICH!

[multigraincracker]

3. I know, I follow the money.

[Fichefinder]

4. Maybe something like a Value Added Tax

[DFW]

13. VAT is government heroin

Once started (it was 10% here in the beginning, now between 19% and 25%), it never stops increasing, and it’s always hidden from the consumers it affects. Low income people are harmed the worst, as they never see it, and have no way around it.

In the USA, each state can levy (or not, if it so chooses, NH, eg)its own sales tax. A national sales tax (VAT) isn’t needed to fill the local needs.

[highplainsdem]

5. No amount of taxes will deal with other harm caused by AI, especially how it dumbs down users,

deskilling them and discouraging them from acquiring new skills and more knowledge.

And the more people use AI, the more surveillance data they provide, and the easier they make it for AI companies to manipulate them.

Any use of AI, unless you're absolutely forced to use it by your job or school, is a bad idea. It can too easily become a crutch that the AI companies will turn into shackles if you become at all dependent on it.

AI tools supposedly offer convenience. They create dependency and addiction.

[multigraincracker]

6. Seems the younger folks are more on to it.

They can spot it more often. My daughter in law figured out to get around it when she changed an image it wouldn’t allow her to

[Blue Full Moon]

8. The answer

?si=4RanLxL72xAJxkXF

[usonian]

9. I grew up listening to Alan Watts on college radio stations. And in the 60's? No wonder I'm so radical.

David Loy talks about money being a symbol, a means, and that people take the means to be an end, and since somebody will always have more, not must money, but" Money, Sex, War and Karma", a great read, subtitled "Notes for a Buddhist Revolution" , then their symbolic appetites can never be fulfilled.

Meanwhile, deregulation and regressive taxes mean that wealth concentrates massively into the hands of fewer and fewer people.

Arguably, whatever causes a more even distribution of wealth (TO ITS CREATORS AND CONSUMERS) makes for a better world. We are approaching a consumerless society, where all that's for sale is AI slop and useless infotainment.

[multigraincracker]

10. 4 am Sunday mornings on the radio.

Allan Watts. I worked nights all week and that was a normal time for me to be awake.
The word is not the thing.

[Blue Full Moon]

7. This was the discussion since I took robotics in 1985.

All this time and no plan other than the republicans letting the tech bros have all our money and creating a corporate dictatorship.

[Intractable]

11. The AI apocolypse is not Skynet, where the robots hunt people.

Rather, it will be the massive collapse of society because the common people will have no means to make a living, and a government that will not implement universal basic income.

[DFW]

12. For the record, back here in the physical world

Proximus replaced Skynet with Pickx in 2019.

(Trivia note for the day)