Sen. Bernie Sanders is bringing his campaign to slow the development of artificial intelligence to his Senate colleagues, organizing a bipartisan briefing for next week that will feature some of the country’s leading AI researchers.
Sanders sent a “dear colleague” letter to senators urging them to attend the Sept. 16 briefing, which will focus on the potential risks posed by increasingly powerful AI systems, according to Axios, which first reported the letter.
“Congress needs SERIOUS discussions about this issue,” Sanders wrote. “That is why I will be convening a private briefing with some of the leading experts in the world to discuss this recent incident and the extraordinary dangers that AI poses for humanity.”
The event will feature Geoffrey Hinton, a Nobel Prize-winning computer scientist often called the “godfather of AI;” Max Tegmark, a physicist and co-founder of the Future of Life Institute; and AI researcher Ajeya Cotra, according to the letter, which was later reported by Politico.
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The briefing comes as Sanders has escalated his push for Congress to put the brakes on the AI industry.
Last week, Sanders (I-Vermont) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) announced legislation that would permanently prohibit the development and deployment of artificial superintelligence while temporarily pausing the development of advanced AI until a federal regulator establishes safety rules. The bill would also direct the U.S. to pursue international agreements aimed at preventing the development of superintelligence around the world.
The briefing also comes after a viral screed by a former Anthropic researcher who resigned over the company’s “out of control” development. The employee, Jacob Coxon, also worked at OpenAI and said “neither company is acting responsibly.”
“The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade,” Coxon posted on X. “This is not a marketing stunt. If anything, many executives and senior researchers will couch their phrasing in the press to sound sensible — but I hear the same people express fear privately. No other human activity poses this level of danger.”
Sanders has also taken aim at AI companies he views as irresponsibly developing the technology.
In an August letter to the CEOs of Anthropic, Meta and OpenAI, Sanders called on the companies to immediately pause AI development, arguing that they had acknowledged instances in which their systems operated outside their intended safeguards. He warned that companies were racing ahead with technology they could not fully understand or control.
Sanders has also separately pushed for a federal moratorium on new AI data centers, arguing that the rapid construction of facilities needed to power AI is creating costs for communities and workers while the government has yet to establish adequate safeguards.
He and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) introduced legislation in March that would pause construction of new AI data centers until national safeguards are in place. Sanders has argued that the pause would give lawmakers time to address AI’s effects on jobs, electricity demand, the environment, privacy and democracy.
“We cannot allow a handful of billionaires, eager to increase their wealth and power, to rush forward with a technology that will fundamentally transform humanity without democratic input or accountability,” Sanders wrote in an April op-ed.
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