DALLAS — Democrats in Congress are planning to investigate artificial intelligence companies if they win the majority in November — plans that emerged after a former Anthropic researcher said AI technology would eventually end humanity, The Washington Sun has learned.
“There’s going to be a lot of interest from the House Democratic Caucus to immediately begin this process,” Rep. Robert Garcia (D-California), the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said in an interview Wednesday. “Anytime you have folks talking about AI moving towards extinction of human life, I think that’s got to rise to the top of priorities for us in Congress.”
In the Senate, Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Arizona) sent a letter to Majority Leader John Thune and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer urging them to create a bipartisan select committee on AI at the beginning of next Congress to conduct hearings and investigations.
“A dedicated, bipartisan committee with the … staff, authorities, and access to classified and technical briefings necessary to conduct sustained oversight is the response this moment requires,” Gallego wrote in the letter, which was shared first with The Sun.
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The plans emerged after Jacob Coxon, a former researcher for Anthropic and OpenAI, announced on X he resigned from Anthropic over concerns that “neither company is acting responsibly” with the technology and are racing to improve software models with no regard for the existential threat AI poses to the global economy and human civilization.
“The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. 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,” Coxon said.
Evan Hubinger, a current researcher working for Anthropic, concurred with Coxon: “Jacob is correct here—we really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10% within the next decade,” he said on X.
“I believe Anthropic is trying its best, but we do not yet have a plan to solve alignment for superintelligence and are not clearly on track to,” Hubinger added.
Garcia, who is likely to become Oversight chair if Democrats win the House in November, told The Sun he found Coxon’s claims “disturbing” and said Congress “has to move quickly.” Garcia is in Dallas doing Democratic counterprogramming while Republicans are gathered in the city for their midterm convention.
Gallego told Senate leadership that “Congress’s current committee structure is not built” to police a rapidly developing technology that evolves every few months.
“Jurisdiction over AI is scattered across multiple Senate committees, each with a focused lens but none with the full picture,” the senator from Arizona wrote.
A select committee on AI, Gallego said, would give Congress “a dedicated venue for direct, sustained engagement with industry, academia, national security officials, and labor.”
“Congress should not wait for a catastrophic failure, widespread economic disruption, or a national security crisis before building the institutional capacity necessary to understand and respond to this technology,” he added.
House Democratic leadership is reportedly considering creating a select committee on AI, Politico reported, and other Democrats have called for a pause on AI development.
“There has to be public hearings; and we can get answers not just from those that are building this AI right now, but also the CEOs who are leading these companies,” Garcia said.
Anthropic and OpenAI did not immediately respond to The Washington Sun’s requests for comment.
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