Sanders: Government should break up OpenAI

https://thehill.com/policy/technology/5571789-ai-threatens-jobs-sanders-warns/

by CharlesW • 9 months ago

46 90 9 months ago

thehill.com

techblueberry• 9 months ago

I don’t know who this Sanders guy is, but he sounds like one sharp cookie. Maybe he should run for president!

bdangubic• 9 months ago

I think he is a senator from one of them small states north of new york city

monerozcash• 9 months ago

Canada? I thought they have a King there now.

bigyabai5• 9 months ago

They should have broken up Google and Apple too. These businesses are too deeply-entwined with the federal government to properly (let alone fairly) prosecuted.

wslh• 9 months ago

Has Sanders worked on that?

bigyabai5• 9 months ago

Constantly: https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/warren...

lazide• 9 months ago

Why would the government break up an entity that is incredibly useful to them as-is?

bigyabai5• 9 months ago

Ideally, social unrest would force antitrust action before their monopoly efforts were usable for censorship or surveillance.

pelorat• 9 months ago

Break up into what? They have one product.

nickff• 9 months ago

And the one product is made up of two components (training and inference) which are each extremely competitive, undifferentiated, and losing money.

kronicum2025• 9 months ago

Break it off from Microsoft definitely. Same with Github I think.

pinnochio3• 9 months ago

No, they don't? Sora is a separate product, and they're working on a social media platform. And that thing with Jony Ive. Other things, too, that I'm sure I'm forgetting.

At any rate, this looks like they made a headline out of a passing comment. I wouldn't read too much into it.

Edit: lol at the AI bros downvoting facts.

mattlutze• 9 months ago

Bell also "just" provided telephone service, but had a nation-wide practical monopoly, and so was broken up into different regional operators.

The US has since gotten bad at dealing with companies like this. A company like Google or Amazon could/should be broken up into a few parts and would likely result in those parts together being worth more than when it was just the one company, and more competition in each industry.

Too early and the break-up can kill innovation. Too late and the company will have been a rent-seeking operation for so long that it chokes out dynamism.

It might be too early for OpenAI, but we shouldn't wait until they own all of the next Internet in the way Facebook, Google and Amazon ended up.

tptacek6• 9 months ago

Yeah: it had a nationwide monopoly. Breaking up the Bells meant breaking that monopoly. That was the public policy goal of forcibly reorganizing the company.

How do you apply that to the OpenAI case? You have to draw the rest of the owl here.

XorNot• 9 months ago

This is Bernie Sanders trying to do populism on a subject he doesn't know much about.

meowface5• 9 months ago

Unpopular opinion here but I don't see any benefit in breaking up goliaths like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, OpenAI.

OpenAI (optically) came out of nowhere and took over everything in a few years. A future company also could. We should punish violation of regulations and the law when it occurs. We don't need to be interfering just because we feel a company is too good at being a company.

If OpenAI violated anything with the recent non-profit stuff, sue or charge them.

IshKebab• 9 months ago

I agree. Consumer-friendly regulation is much more valuable.

Also it remains to be seen how long OpenAI will even survive. They are losing a ton of money and don't really have much of a moat.

smt88• 9 months ago

The other companies you mentioned are making more money from AI than OpenAI is. And Microsoft owns a huge chunk of OpenAI too.

bix64• 9 months ago

You don’t see a single benefit? You think monopoly power is worthwhile?

pedalpete• 9 months ago

Don't know why you are getting downvoted, it is a legitimate question.

Yes, monopoly power is worthwhile. It's abusing monopoly power which is illegal.

I don't see OpenAI abusing a monopoly. If Sanders is looking to the future and saying "they may do that one day", well, that's like saying someone might commit murder one day, so we should put them in jail now.

It doesn't work that way.

Just to be clear, I'm actually a fan of Bernie Sanders. Though, I'm not American, so it doesn't really matter.

meowface5• 9 months ago

As long as it's not a monopoly that is effectively impossible to beat: yes, I do.

I broadly consider myself left-wing but I think the libertarians are kind of right on that point.

nradov• 9 months ago

There don't seem to be any substantial federal legal issues in OpenAI converting one of its units from a non-profit to a for-profit corporation. This is almost entirely a state issue, and OpenAI was able to get the California state government to go along with the plan by threatening to move to another state. For better or worse that's the way our dual sovereignty federal system works.

BrenBarn2• 9 months ago

A future company also could.

Then they should be broken up too.

We don't need to be interfering just because we feel a company is too good at being a company.

We absolutely do, because "being good at being a company" has become a sort of paperclip-maximizing game that is pretty well divorced from anything beneficial to society.

meowface5• 9 months ago

We absolutely do, because "being good at being a company" has become a sort of paperclip-maximizing game that is pretty well divorced from anything beneficial to society.

I doubt that that's true. In some cases at some companies, but I wouldn't be surprised if harm to society is per capita more likely at non-monopolies than at monopolies.

crabmusket2• 9 months ago

We should punish violation of regulations and the law when it occurs

The law includes regulations around competition and monopoly which companies frequently violate, and the consequences can sometimes be as severe as getting "broken up".

I don't think Bernie's on to anything here, but competition law is good actually.

meowface5• 9 months ago

If a company is consistently abusing its status as a monopoly, punishment should ensue. But simply being a monopoly can mean you simply outcompeted everyone else and others fail to outcompete you. You might continue winning fair and square.

spicyusername• 9 months ago

Ugh, this is why liberals are struggling. Nothing but weak policy proposals and unlikable personalities.

What even is this as a platform? Yes, wealth inequality is bad, but what exactly does this do to solve it...?

HanClinto• 9 months ago

Harrison Bergeron, maybe?

rs186• 9 months ago

Sanders has always like this. In fact his policy is quite different from the "mainstream" Domocrats and always has been.

"Liberals are struggling" "this as a platform" if you try to conclude what the "platform" is from Sanders' opinions you'll be quite far from the truth.

aegypti• 9 months ago

Bernie Sanders is not a democrat or liberal, he is a democratic socialist who specifically runs as an independent.

That normal liberals are so deeply associated with his ilk by the national electorate to the point Harris was considered more radical than Trump is a whole can of worms in itself.

TimorousBestie• 9 months ago

Calling Sanders a liberal has never been accurate, identifying him with Democrats is a sign of political color-blindness.

rvz• 9 months ago

Reality: We need to reach AGI first (which means IPO at $1T and then sell our shares on the public market) before we can have discussions about a break up.

Der_Einzige2• 9 months ago

And just like that, I’m no longer a Bernie bro.

Tech ludditism is the death drive externalized. Andrew Yang is all we have left for a pro tech left wing - and #Math isn’t going to win elections.

lyu072822• 9 months ago

Andrew Yang isn't left-wing wtf. People think Obama is left-wing too, people are so politically confused

Der_Einzige2• 9 months ago

Go look at his campaign website circa 2020 issues page and tell me again he’s not left wing.

ford• 9 months ago

The argument sounds like he believes AI (+ robotics) will take jobs, and breaking up OpenAI could slow it down

Historically the most productive countries are the most prosperous - I think there is a big landscape of local maxima/minima in how healthy & happy a country/economy is, but shunning new technology has never been the path to Quality of Life. The only future where the US maintains its relative success involves American leadership in AI and robotics, with humans supporting them

BrenBarn2• 9 months ago

That doesn't mean that technology has to be shoveled out to the public by the truckload. A country can have a productive pharmaceutical industry without being full of drug addicts. Also, there can be technological advances without having them concentrated in a small number of companies.

idiotsecant• 9 months ago

The most productive countries are the most prosperous for the owner class. Ask a random citizen from West Virginia how much they've benefited from the market share of Nvidia increasing

DarkNova63• 9 months ago

The only future where the US maintains its relative success involves American leadership in AI and robotics, with humans supporting them

I never understood this take. It strikes me more as "faith in our lord and savior AI" without actual evidence to support this.

CamperBob22• 9 months ago

Almost every advantage we have over every other country, we owe to technology. (Well, that and a couple of oceans, I suppose.) Historically, Americans have been better at taking every possible advantage of automation, computation, and tech in general than anyone else.

Do you expect that to change, and if so, how?

_DeadFred_3• 9 months ago

Ah yes, the magic job fairy. Because there were jobs in the past, there will be jobs in the future.

There were also skid rows after industrialization in the US. Lots of people didn't make it out of them to the post ww2 jobs everyone thinks about when they say 'industrialization brought good jobs'.

There were also flop houses post industrialization, where you could rent yourself your own section of rope to lean on for the night.

But yep, after WW2 there were lots of jobs in the US. When did industrialization happen though? Why do we ignore all those that didn't make it out of skid row/flop houses and jump to an implied 1940s+ jobs market?

meowface5• 9 months ago

I don't think the person you were replying to was necessarily strongly implying that many or perhaps most Americans wouldn't become permanently unemployed or unemployable.

Hamstringing productivity and technology because of possible job loss - even loss of nearly all jobs, yes - just is not a sensible move. Moves certainly need to be made, but the best action is definitely not deindustrialization and degrowth and luddism. The dock worker unions demanding a ban on port automation is a microcosm of how we will slowly decay as a country.

Even the smart communists understand this. The goal should be wellbeing and prosperity and lack of scarcity for all. The end goal is not "ensure everyone can do these painstaking jobs which non-humans can do exponentially better and faster and cheaper". This is an artificial goal because of vague worries about "purpose". Yes, people need purpose, but placing objects onto locations or pressing buttons on a screen is not the pinnacle of what it means to be a sentient entity.

maplethorpe• 9 months ago

Not all technology is adopted equally, though. Traditionally we pick and choose which technologies to adopt based on their usefulness and efficiency, rather than adopting absolutely everything because it falls under the banner of "technology".

flashgordon• 9 months ago

I am a +1 for productivity. Personal productivity. Countries with the highest productivity equating to highest prosperity is fine but it overlooks the acceleration income disparity. I struggle to reconcile with that.

sothatsit2• 9 months ago

Break ups are for monopolies, not for startups. This makes no sense.

If Bernie just wants to slow down automation then breaking up OpenAI is not the way to do it.

conception• 9 months ago

“Startup”.

tptacek6• 9 months ago

What's your point? What do you think Sanders thinks we should break OpenAI into? What N new companies do you think he thinks we should create?

sothatsit2• 9 months ago

"Not well-established company with no profit and lots of competition" doesn't quite roll off the tongue.

biophysboy• 9 months ago

My best case scenario for AI is that it becomes a dirt cheap commodity. If the hyperscalers pour trillions into it, fail to build a moat around it, and end up giving newcomers the tools to replace them, that would be absolutely fantastic.

animitronix• 9 months ago

Breaking up a company that loses billions every quarter doesn't make any sense, but I'm not surprised Sanders wouldn't understand

paulvnickerson• 9 months ago

Bernie Sanders is a professional useless person. He was once kicked out of a commune for failing to pull his own weight.

tptacek6• 9 months ago

I think this is more a branding statement than an actual policy proposal. Breaking up OpenAI doesn't make any sense, not merely because it has intense competition, but also because it doesn't have meaningful internal business units whose collusion cause public policy problems.

Really, what he's saying is "OpenAI should make and spend less money". The honest policy proposal there is to tax the bejeezus out of it.

But Sanders has, for reasons I don't really understand, gone all in on a modern antitrust branding around "oligarchy", so that all his statements about excessive corporate power have to be about restructuring companies, rather than exercising the full portfolio of powers the government has to influence the economy.

You saw something similar a few days ago from Elizabeth Warren, who reacted to the UE1 outage by saying we should break up AWS. Not Amazon: AWS. Like, RDS and S3 should be different companies. That's not real; whether or not she understood what she was saying, she didn't mean it. What she means is she doesn't like huge corporations (fair enough).

It's annoying to have to read between the lines on these people, but I guess that's always been politics.

zr98f321• 9 months ago

One of the saddest things about elderly American politicians is their inability to understand the nature of the globalized economy which necessitates competition.

"We should cripple our strongest AI Company" translates into "We will be subservient to foreign companies".

Just look at how the collapsed British Empire is trying to enforce its nonsensical censorship laws on American companies with no success.

Good luck getting DeepSeek to do what you want. See iRobot for an example of this American self-flagellation by the elderly in action.

zug_zug• 9 months ago

I'm not sure if I understand how a break-up would work, but the sentiment that government be ready to nationalize or otherwise prevent a single company from potentially disrupting the whole economy seems obvious.

Perhaps it would look like this -- if you replace a worker with AI then you must still pay minimum wage straight into a public benefit tax.

mhb7• 9 months ago

Sanders thinks that nationwide rent control is the solution to housing affordability. Why would anyone pay attention to what he thinks?

bix64• 9 months ago

He thinks that is one part of the solution so you’re obviously not arguing in good faith.

mhb7• 9 months ago

Sanders thinks that nationwide rent control is part of the solution to housing affordability. Why would anyone pay attention to what he thinks?

HaZeust2• 9 months ago

I've never heard him say that he believes rent control will solve housing affordability. Can you share where you've seen him say that?

I've seen him say it will prevent landlord exploitation, but by definition - almost any pragmatic appliance of rent control will admit a goal of cheaper month-to-month rent. At present, a lot of rental properties have a monthly payment that are equal to - or sometimes more - than mortgage payments for similar* offerings in the same area.

It then follows logically that if rent control leads to cheaper rent, and a lot of rent costs are presently equal to or more than mortgage payments, then it makes renting affordability easier - and housing affordability is still innately more expensive. Rent control is a rent solution, and I guess it makes RENTAL of housing more affordable - which is good. But it's not a solution for the costs of buying houses.

mhb7• 9 months ago

Can you share where you've seen him say that?

https://www.cato.org/blog/folly-bernie-sanders-national-rent...

mhb7• 9 months ago

At present, a lot of rental properties have a monthly payment that are equal to - or sometimes more - than mortgage payments for similar* offerings in the same area.

A lot? Where? You'd expect investors to be backing up the trucks for these properties if that were true.

_DeadFred_3• 9 months ago

AI is a natural fit to be provided through libraries.

Protostome• 9 months ago

Not him again ...

tim3333• 9 months ago

“I want to see us rebuilding manufacturing in America, but it ain’t going to do any worker any good if that manufacturing work is done by robots,” he said.

It's kind of like trying to preserve agricultural jobs by banning farm machinery. It's not the way to prosperity. People who would have dug potatoes become yoga instructors or web consultants or whatever.

Sanders: Government should break up OpenAI

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