Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed is calling for a pause on AI development after warnings from Anthropic researchers that it could destroy humans this decade, calling it a “break glass moment.”
“I think now we’re in a situation where time is of the essence,” El-Sayed said Wednesday in an exclusive interview with The Washington Sun. “The speed at which this is all progressing is really quite alarming, considering the fact that they’ve taken on capacities we did not know were previously possible.”
The debate over the rapid development of data centers required for AI development is a major flash point in the midterm elections, but Congress hasn’t done much to address concerns.
El-Sayed, who’s running against Michigan Republican Mike Rogers in November, released an AI plan earlier this summer calling for public ownership of artificial intelligence and strict safety rules. He told The Sun that it’s now time to go further.
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“I think it’s important for us to really hit pause, hit pause in a serious way, and fully understand what it is that is being built when it has so much potential spillover into irreversible damage for humanity,” he added.
Fears about the rapid pace of AI development have escalated sharply following recent incidents involving rogue AI agents. On Tuesday, several Anthropic researchers went public with serious concerns about the industry.
“The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade,” AI researcher Jacob Coxon wrote in a social media post announcing his resignation from the company. “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.”
Anthropic alignment-science lead Evan Hubinger responded by agreeing with Coxon, putting the odds of humanity’s extinction at greater than 10%.
“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 said.
These are only the latest warnings about AI. Earlier this week, OpenAI Chief Scientist Jakub Pachocki warned that AI capabilities are advancing faster than researchers’ ability to reliably monitor and control them. In July, nearly 1,400 AI company employees signed an open letter urging the U.S. government to regulate the technology.
Policymakers have been slow to respond.
President Donald Trump last month declared the U.S. should “let Data Reign,” criticizing towns and states that reject AI data centers. In Congress, Republicans have broadly cheered AI development, while Democrats have mostly focused on oversight and safeguards. Progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, went furthest by calling for a moratorium on new data center construction and a pause on advanced AI development.
Still, there are signs of bipartisan appetite for stronger AI regulation.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, a Republican from Florida, called on Congress to convene “a special session on AI and what the future of the U.S. looks like.”
“There are very real impacts to society as we know it. Partisan politics aside, there are massive implications of a race towards super intelligence. This is not a doomer post, as some of the advancements will greatly impact access to healthcare, targeted treatments, increase in safer food production etc… but not enough of Congress is focusing on this,” Luna wrote Wednesday in a social media post.
El-Sayed, a progressive Democrat who’s been backed by Sanders, also said it’s time to take more drastic steps to ensure AI doesn’t lead to economic and societal catastrophe.
“AI is truly a life altering technology. The question for us is: In what way does it alter our lives?” he told The Sun. “And I think that’s entirely driven by the disincentives right now to pursue a kind of winner-take-all economic toll that has them displacing jobs at the minimum and potentially creating catastrophically dangerous technology.”
El-Sayed also dismissed arguments from AI proponents that the U.S. must lead AI development or else risk the technology falling into the hands of an adversary like China.
“So you’re telling me that you’re going to race forward into a technology you don’t really understand, so that somehow you can have more control over it than they do, except for you don’t have control over what you’re creating now, and you beating them may, in the interim, create technology we actually can’t keep hold of?” he said. “That argument is hard to make.”
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