Leading progressives, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Greg Cassar (D-Texas), agree on several issues with staunch conservatives like Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) and former White House strategist Steve Bannon. But all four were scheduled to appear at the Marriott Ballroom in Washington on Tuesday to sound the alarm about the existential threat of artificial intelligence.
“Our jobs, our freedoms, our safety are all at risk. It’s hard to think of a problem that fundamentally touches more aspects of our lives,” Cassar said at the event, dubbed the Pro-Human Assembly, hosted by the Future of Life Institute, a nonprofit that advocates for countering large-scale technological risks.
The event was planned before last week’s shocking post by Anthropic employee Jacob Coxon. He resigned and wrote a post on Company X about the grave risks of unchecked AI development, saying that major developers, including OpenAI and Anthropic, are “putting their lives on the line.” But in the wake of the revelations, the rally took on new meaning as much of Washington scrambles to embrace rapidly evolving technology with little regulation.
Following Coxon’s post, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the company was postponing plans to go public this year, citing growing concerns about the safety of AI. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay over the weekend urging AI companies to slow down their development. His proposal received support online from both Altman and xAI founder Elon Musk.
But the warnings have so far been ignored by President Donald Trump and Republican leaders on Capitol Hill.
President Trump called the concerns a “hoax” and doubled down on his support for the industry.
“The only control or ‘guardrail’ that AI needs is a strong and smart (high IQ!) president, and America definitely has that!” Trump posted on Truth Social on Monday.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) said it’s the responsibility of tech companies, not Congress, to regulate themselves. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) cited the Chinese threat in an interview with Politico, saying that if the technology were to be deadly, “I’d rather have an American killer robot than a Chinese killer robot.”
And on Tuesday morning, Vice President J.D. Vance met with Republicans near the Capitol, about a mile from the Future of Life event. According to Republicans present, AI did not appear.
Even among those who recognize the growing threat of AI, there is so far little consensus on how to address it. Mr. Roy, who attended the event, appeared to have some disagreement with the president, advocating for a balanced approach between government and business. Roy is the policy chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, a far-right group that has split with President Trump over issues such as federal spending.
“The president said yesterday that he should be the one making decisions about AI, and I don’t think that’s the case. I don’t think the CEOs of big tech companies should be making all the decisions about AI. I don’t think Congress should be making all the decisions about AI,” Roy said, though he said Congress should decide how to use the technology through committees with outside input.
Earlier this month, Cazale and Sanders, who chair the Congressional Progressive Caucus, introduced legislation that would ban AI superintelligence and put a moratorium on advanced AI development. And Massachusetts Democrat Lori Trahan, who has been the most vocal advocate on Capitol Hill in recent months on AI regulation, co-led a bipartisan bill in June that would create a federal framework for how the U.S. would govern the technology. She also spoke at Tuesday’s event.
But the House of Representatives leaves Washington on Thursday and is not scheduled to return until after the Nov. 3 election, so any calls for swift legislative action on AI safety are likely to go unanswered until at least after the election.
And Republicans have repeatedly expressed concern that a slowdown in U.S. AI companies could hamstring China and other adversaries.
“We cannot pause the development of AI because doing so would mean we would lose our advantage over China, and that would have serious national security implications for every American family,” Johnson told reporters on Tuesday.
Trahan rejected that framework at the Future of Life event.
“When we lose this technology, we don’t lose it as Democrats or Republicans or as Americans or Chinese people. We lose it as humans, as all of us,” she said.
— Laura Garrison and Irit Skulnik contributed to this article.
