Democratic socialist U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, who claims to be a democrat from Vermont, has invited Chinese AI experts to Washington D.C. to discuss topics related to the threats to survival and international cooperation posed by AI. This move has sparked intense reactions in American policy circles and has been widely discussed on social media and in the media. The U.S. Treasury Secretary posted that the real threat to AI security lies in allowing any country other than the United States to set global standards.
Sanders, an independent federal senator from Vermont, will host an AI risk and governance symposium in Washington D.C. on Wednesday, April 29, where he will invite two Chinese AI experts, Zeng Yi and Xue Lan, as well as Western scholars including an MIT professor, to discuss the threats to survival posed by AI and the necessity of international cooperation.
The invitation of Chinese experts by American politicians to comment on AI regulations has sparked heated reactions in American political and policy circles, as well as generating attention and discussion on social media platforms. Some posts have claimed that “the world is really upside down when American politicians and individuals from the Chinese Communist Party discuss how to regulate AI in the United States together.”
Michael Sobolik, China policy expert at the Hudson Institute, stated that there should not be “cooperation with foreign adversaries” on critical technology governance issues.
On April 27, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent shared his views on the matter. Bessent said, “The United States has the world’s best AI researchers. However, Senator Sanders is not leveraging America’s innovation capabilities but instead inviting foreign citizens to guide how the U.S. should regulate AI.”
“It’s like letting Hugo Chavez from Venezuela instruct us on how to manage the economy – wait, this Senator from Vermont did the same thing 20 years ago.”
Bessent concluded by saying, “The real threat to AI security lies in allowing any country other than the United States to set global standards.”
Bessent mentioned Hugo Chavez, the former President of Venezuela. Chavez implemented socialism in Venezuela by nationalizing thousands of private companies, including media outlets, oil and electricity companies, mines, farms, banks, factories, and grocery stores.
Chavez’s policies revolved around oil exports and borrowing foreign debt from China to implement socialist initiatives like free healthcare, education, and public housing. The actual outcome of the socialist policies implemented in the country led Venezuela, once the wealthiest country in South America, to economic collapse, widespread hunger, violence, and the exodus of millions of people seeking refuge abroad.
On the other hand, Sanders and U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are pushing the “Artificial Intelligence Data Center Moratorium Act,” proposing to halt the construction of new AI data centers until comprehensive regulations are established. Critics argue that this move would weaken U.S. competitiveness, especially since Sanders has invited Chinese experts to participate in discussions, creating a stark contrast.
An opinion article published by “The Hill” remarked, “Sanders’s socialist ideology on artificial intelligence and tech regulation is simply absurd.”
“In reality, this is deliberate sabotage. It now appears that this senator is willing to cooperate with foreign hostile forces to devise various strategies to slow down the implementation of artificial intelligence in the United States.”
The Chinese AI experts invited by Sanders include Zeng Yi, the Director of the Beijing Institute for AI Security and Governance and a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Automation, and Professor Xue Lan from Tsinghua University in Beijing, who serves as the Director of the “New Generation AI Governance Professional Committee.”
Also attending the event will be Max Tegmark, a physics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and David Krueger, an assistant professor at the University of Montreal and a core academic member of Mila (Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms).