Bernie Sanders’s New, Necessary, Bold Act: Taking on the AI Oligarchs

The 84-year-old has a new cause—and it’s as important as anything he’s ever done.

This time last year, Senator Bernie Sanders was giving speeches in front of thousands of people, decrying what he correctly describes as an “oligarchy” that dominates American business and politics. But this year, Sanders’s most noteworthy move was sitting in a dark room by himself, asking questions to Claude. While the senator listened intently, Claude described how companies are using artificial intelligence in ways that are eroding Americans’ privacy and could eliminate their jobs. 

Claude is of course the name of the AI tool created by the company Anthropic. Sanders was trying to dramatize this new technology by having the bot itself explain its enormous powers. The Vermont senator, once pushing free college, Medicare for All, and wealth taxes, has now become perhaps the loudest voice in America warning of the dangers of AI. He is giving speeches around the country, as well as writing op-eds. He is pushing cities and states to ban AI data centers and recently introduced a bill that would ban them nationwide. He is mobilizing people in the tech industry skeptical of AI to speak up, hoping they will be even more credible voices than the senator himself. 

Leading the anti-AI charge may be one of the last big acts in politics for the 84-year-old Sanders. And this is a critical mission. The Democratic Party and the country desperately need a leader who isn’t afraid of being portrayed as a Luddite or anti-business and will therefore forcefully air concerns about the proliferation of AI leading to mass employment, environmental degradation, and an even greater concentration of wealth in the hands of a few. Sanders has stepped into this void. His advocacy could reshape discourse and policy on this issue, just as he has played a critical role over the last decade in getting the country refocused on income inequality. 

“We’re looking at the most transformational economic revolution in world history, and Congress is way, way behind the eight ball on it,” the senator told me in an interview last week.  

The battle over AI is a natural outgrowth of Sanders’s focus on billionaires over the last year (and really much of his career.) Many of the people and companies that the Vermont senator has long warned are growing too powerful are also big players in AI. So he rattles off the names of Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg in his AI remarks, just as he did in his anti-oligarchy speeches last year. 

And like the Big Tech industry that has........

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