|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Workers, students and researchers in Silicon Valley are no strangers to the idea that artificial intelligence may be coming for their jobs. Many are under the impression that it’s not a matter of if, but when.
But for Sen. Bernie Sanders, an avowed skeptic of the billionaire class, the new technology has ramifications that go well beyond economics.
“If AI is going to replace a lot of the work that human beings do, what becomes of human beings?” the Vermont senator posited to a packed auditorium at Stanford University on Friday. “Are we superfluous in the process? What happens to our ability to relate to each other?”
Sanders and U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna, whose district is nestled in the Silicon Valley, spoke to over a thousand people at Jane Stanford Memorial Auditorium about the intersection of AI technology and the labor movement, often to uproarious applause. The town hall event, titled “Who Controls the Future of AI: The Oligarchs or The People?” was hosted by Stanford College Democrats and Stanford Speakers Bureau.
Khanna and Sanders have both been recognized as progressive leaders in Congress. The senator was concluding his brief speaking tour of California at Stanford, just outside Khanna’s district, after the two met with technology leaders in Silicon Valley earlier in the day.
Khanna described his district, which includes Milpitas, Sunnyvale, Cupertino and Santa Clara, as the “epicenter of wealth concentration and AI.” He said that approximately one-third of the country’s stock market is within his Congressional boundaries.
“Tech billionaires believe they have a modern divine right to lead and rule,” Khanna told the crowd.
Sanders, whose Senate tenure and presidential campaigns have focused on the richest “one percent” of Americans accountable for extreme wealth inequality, found a lot of common ground with Khanna when it came to standards for tech bureaucrats, too.
But where they differed in a policy response to AI is data centers. These massive centers have cropped up throughout the country in order to meet the increasing energy requirements of AI technology. A typical AI data center can use as much electricity as 100,000 households, NPR reported, as well as billions of gallons of water to prevent the computer systems from overheating.
Silicon Valley is one of the top host regions in the entire country for data centers, Palo Alto city staff told the Utilities Advisory Commission earlier this month.
Sanders supports a nationwide moratorium on the growth of data centers until political leaders and the public have a better understanding of the long-term impacts of expanding AI.
“The Congress and the American people are very unprepared for the tsunami that is coming,” Sanders said. “We have got to slow this thing down.”
After the event, Khanna declined to support Sanders’ idea, falling back on a list of seven principles he proposed to curb the detrimental effects of artificial intelligence. He said he supports a model like the ones in Singapore and Finland, where tech companies are on the hook financially for their substantial energy use in local communities.
Palo Alto has been grappling with the strain of data center energy use on its infrastructure, which is run locally through the city instead of through a major provider like PG&E. Santa Clara, which is in Khanna’s district, operates under a similar local electric model.
“If there are data centers that are putting constraints on (the infrastructure), the tech companies need to pay for that. They can’t put that burden on the local community in Santa Clara or Palo Alto,” Khanna said in an interview after the event.
Sanders and Khanna also covered topics ranging from data privacy, AI chatbots’ impact on mental health and deep fake technology, which can create convincing photos and videos of people that never happened. Political campaigns are particularly vulnerable to deep fakes — Sanders recalled being a victim of the technology himself.
State legislators are also grappling with the problem of AI deepfakes. State Sen. Josh Becker, whose district includes Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Menlo Park and other Silicon Valley municipalities, proposed a bill earlier this week that would increase penalties for use of AI for fraud and defamation.
But most of all, Sanders and Khanna hoped to imbue the audience with a sense of urgency about the rapidly evolving technology related to artificial intelligence. Both said they did not believe AI was inherently good or bad; Khanna described himself as an “AI democratist” rather than an accelerationist or doomer.
Sanders compared the current state of the technology to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, except he said the changes are coming at an exponentially faster rate. He cautioned that if workers and the general public are caught unawares, then the wealthiest individuals will continue to advance AI for one reason: the pursuit of profit.
Even at a place like Stanford, a leading institution for AI research and advancement, his comments received thunderous applause.
“We are looking at the most significant investment in human history, which is bringing about the most rapid societal transformation in human history,” Sanders said.
Woodside town manager on leave after releasing whistleblower report against mayor, council membersFebruary 19, 2026 12:10 pm
