Bernie Sanders’ conversation with AI chatbot Claude gets the meme treatment | indy100

@SenSanders/X

Vermont senator Bernie Sanders has blessed us with numerous memes in recent years - from the ‘once again asking’ video to the photograph of him sporting some mittens at Joe Biden’s inauguration - and now, his interaction with an AI chatbot has been the latest moment in his political career to get the meme treatment.

In a video posted to his social media channels on Thursday, the 84-year-old was seen sitting opposite a phone with Anthropic’s Claude chatbot on it, with the senator writing in the video’s caption that he spoke to the tech “about AI collecting massive amounts of personal data and how that information is being used to violate our privacy rights”.

“What an AI agent says about the dangers of AI is shocking and should wake us up,” he said.

Asked what would surprise Americans in terms of data collection, Claude replied: “Companies are collecting data from everywhere. Your browsing history, your location, what you buy, what you search for, even how long you pause on a webpage.

“Then they’re feeding all of that into AI systems that create incredibly detailed profiles about you.

“What would surprise people is how little they actually consented to and how little they understand about it. Most people click ‘agree’ on terms of service without reading them, and they have no idea that their data is being combined with thousands of other data points to build a picture of who they are.”

Yet while the rise of artificial intelligence is an important and pressing topic, many were drawn to the video’s meme potential:

“Old Man yells at claude,” tweeted podcaster Stephen L. Miller, referencing the viral Simpsons meme:

Justine Moore of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz shared another meme of a shocked Sanders:

And away from the memes, Bloomberg podcaster Joe Weisenthal praised Sanders’ curiosity:

Never change, Bernie.

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