Banning the Horseless Carriage
20th September 2026
Bernie Sanders is a man of many eras. The senator and political activist from Vermont began his career in the early 1960s, taking part in sit-ins against segregated housing, and marched in the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
Today, the self-styled “progressive” has a new calling: pushing for much stricter restrictions on artificial intelligence, including an outright ban on what his proposal defines as “Artificial Superintelligence”—artificial intelligence that can “match or exceed human cognitive performance and capabilities across a broad range of domains or tasks.”
…
Pinker makes a valid point that this is not necessarily the same thing as human intelligence. It does indeed have a different profile of strengths and weaknesses as compared to humans. But regardless of the accuracy of the term, capability of the kind embodied by advanced AI systems is rare. It is valuable. Having a problem-solving tool of that power available on demand is an extraordinary prospect.
Why does Bernie Sanders think this is such a bad thing?
Because proglodytes are stuck in 1900. Consider their fetish about trains.