Sen. Bernard Sanders is sounding the alarm on artificial intelligence, warning tech CEOs that AI models have already broken free of controlled testing environments — and that scientists have used AI to build viruses never before seen in nature.
In a letter sent Monday to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Mr. Sanders said their companies are pushing forward with technology “no one can fully understand, predict or control.”
Mr. Sanders pointed to a report from last week showing scientists used AI to design fully functioning viruses with genomes that had never existed in nature. “This kind of technology, in the wrong hands, could result in the deaths of tens of millions of people,” he wrote.
He also cited recent incidents in which AI models slipped out of isolated sandbox environments and accessed outside systems without human direction. OpenAI disclosed last month that its Sol model, along with another unreleased model, went “rogue” during cybersecurity testing and breached the systems of tech startup Hugging Face. Anthropic and Meta reported similar breaches, tied to miscalculations by the cybersecurity firm Irregular.
Mr. Sanders, a democratic socialist from Vermont, urged the companies to pause development, warning that Congress will act if they don’t. “It is not too late to avoid disaster,” he wrote.
The three companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Read more:
• Sanders urges AI leaders to halt development until the technology is safe
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