Washington — Steve Bannon, one of President Trump’s earliest advisers, and independent Sen. Bernie Sanders may stand on opposite sides of the political spectrum, but both are speaking at a gathering Tuesday to press for guardrails for AI.
The two — along with a bipartisan group of members of Congress — will be appearing at the “Pro-Human Assembly” in Washington, D.C. They’re calling for a “human-centric” approach to developing artificial intelligence technology.
“Let us be clear — artificial intelligence and robotics are the most transformational technologies in the history of humanity,” Sanders said Tuesday as he opened his remarks. “And they will impact the lives of every man, woman and child in our country.”
Concern about the ability to control AI’s growth has been building. Earlier this month, AI researcher Jacob Coxon publicly resigned from Anthropic, which makes the AI app Claude, and said that artificial intelligence, while safe for people to use now, could one day threaten humanity as the technology grows more powerful.
“If you have a super advanced intelligence, it could — it will be smart enough to kill us,” Coxon told CBS News senior business and technology correspondent Jo Ling Kent. He accused Anthropic and rival developer and ChatGPT-maker OpenAI of “gambling with our lives” by racing to develop advanced AI models.
On Saturday, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for a slowdown in the frontier AI labs, which was quickly echoed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Elon Musk. Liberal and conservative members of Congress are also urging caution.
At the same time, though, President Trump fired off seven Truth Social posts about AI throughout Monday, repeatedly calling fears over rapid AI development a “HOAX” and saying all AI needs is a strong president like him.
GOP Rep. Chip Roy, a staunch conservative from Texas, told the conference that the crux of the issue goes well beyond “raw politics.” Roy said he hears his constituents’ concerns in Texas about data centers, citing their worries about competing with data centers for water and about the noise the centers generate. But the fear goes much deeper, he said.
“They raise questions about their future. They raise questions about what it means for their children, their communities,” he said at the conference, adding, “So, the question here is, how do you harness the power of human-created technology to put — as we are here to discuss — humans first?”
CBS News polling from May shows 65% of Americans think AI will decrease jobs, and 67% of Americans think the federal government probably or certainly will not make sure AI is used in appropriate ways.
Roy said he’s been “scolded” by some of his free-enterprise Republican friends for raising these questions. He also said he disagrees with Mr. Trump, who maintains that a strong president is all that’s needed to safeguard AI. Roy also expressed skepticism about the motives of AI CEOs like Amodei.
“Might they be self-interested?” Roy said. “Might they want to corner the market and have a monopoly environment?”
AI needs to be “humans first,” Roy said. “We are not supposed to be tools for data collection and technology. That should be what drives everything that we’re thinking about going forward.”
Just before Roy spoke, Democratic Rep. Greg Casar, a progressive from Texas, took the stage and raised U.S. competitive interests remniscient of the Cold War. “We may be Americans or Soviets or Chinese, but we are still human,” Casar said. “Now just as back then, we need a pro-human approach.”
“No one can end the AI arms race. It’s up to us to end the AI arms race,” Casar said.
Rep. Lori Trahan, a Democrat from Massachusetts addressed the gathering after Roy, and took note of the bipartisanship in the room and in Congress on the issue. Trahan introduced the FRONTIER Act with Republican Rep. Jay Obernolte of California, calling for independent evaluators of frontier AI models, among other things.
“Humans are not means to artificial ends,” Trahan said. “We are ends in ourselves.”
Trahan told reporters that it makes it harder for her Republican colleagues when the leader of their party is speaking out against something that’s gaining bipartisan momentum, but she still expects movement on legislation in the weeks ahead.
House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters on Capitol Hill Tuesday that he and AI company chiefs will meet with Mr. Trump at the White House “within the next week.”
Amid Mr. Trump’s all-caps social media posts about AI development, Vice President JD Vance acknowledged voters’ concerns and the risks posed by the technology.
“You know, it’s something that we’re concerned by, but we want to make sure that we actually regulate smartly, and we’re thoughtful about the risk here,” he told reporters after an event in Kansas on Monday. “There are obviously risks to AI; there are some benefits to AI.”
