Tech leaders are begging Congress to step in and provide guardrails on AI development after dire warnings about the rapid advances in the technology and its risks to humanity, but lawmakers remain as divided as ever on how and whether to do so.
“We do not want to jump in,” House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters Monday. “The reflex of legislative bodies is to cover things up with red tape and hyper-regulation. If you do that, then you lose your edge, and that is a national security concern for the American people,” he said, arguing the United States must stay ahead of China in the AI race.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters Congress needs to take a “light touch” on AI regulation. “You don’t want to stifle innovation, but I think you also want to make sure that the more advanced threats can be mitigated,” he said.
Johnson said President Donald Trump was summoning officials and tech leaders to a meeting at the White House late this week or early next, but Trump has already declared flat-out opposition to new laws regulating AI.
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In a Monday post on his social media website Truth Social, Trump said “the only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!” He added that there “is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China.”
Last week, several Anthropic researchers warned about the existential threat posed by AI, with one going so far as putting the risk of humanity’s extinction at greater than 10%. Top AI leaders including ChatGPT founder Sam Altman, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, are also raising unprecedented warnings about the pace of development, calling for an immediate slowdown in advancing AI models.
Democrats argue legislation is needed to curb frontier AI development and put in oversight measures like independent evaluators to ensure the technology is kept in check and doesn’t go rogue like in several recent incidents. Many fear AI will enable sophisticated cyberattacks or aid the development of biological or nuclear weapons.
The Republican-controlled Congress doesn’t appear set to take meaningful action anytime soon. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is planning a caucus meeting on AI on Tuesday, while Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is pressing the Trump administration to hold a classified briefing for members of the Senate on the risks posed by AI.
“Warning bells are ringing louder than they ever have – and the Trump administration is looking the other way,” Schumer said in a statement on Monday. “Well, if they won’t hold themselves accountable, we will.”
Past meetings and briefings with top tech leaders have yielded little progress on AI, even when Democrats were in power.
In September 2023, for example, Schumer, who was Senate majority leader at the time, convened a bipartisan group of senators for a closed-door meeting on AI with top tech leaders, including Musk and Altman. Musk warned lawmakers at the time about the “civilizational risk” posed by AI, and voiced support for a standalone federal agency to regulate AI. The senators later released a roadmap for AI regulation aiming to balance technological growth with essential guardrails, but it went nowhere.
Democrats responded to last week’s warnings by calling for emergency action on AI, though there’s not much time to do so. The Senate is scheduled to be in session for three weeks before leaving town to allow senators to campaign ahead of the November midterm elections. The House is scheduled to be in session only for one week before doing the same.
“Congress should be on an emergency footing in the coming week,” said Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz. “We have to move at the pace of the threat, not our own habits and rhythms. People are depending on us to take swift bipartisan action that meaningfully reduces AI risk.”
Senators are set to consider legislation this week regulating crypto and college sports. The House, meanwhile, is expected to vote on bipartisan legislation sanctioning Russia over its war in Ukraine.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, has called for a moratorium on data center construction and a halt on advanced AI development. He also introduced legislation to ban AI superintelligence, but no Senate Democrats have joined him on that measure.
Other Democrats favor a less aggressive approach, proposing safety measures while allowing for AI development to continue.
Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal wrote in a post online that a voluntary system of auditors was not enough, referring to tech leaders’ vows to institute internal safeguard. “It must be a statutorily established regimen, with power to determine whether models & new products are safe & effective, just as independent scientists are authorized to do under the FDA,” he said.
One measure that could gain traction is being written by Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, who chairs the Senate Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over technology issues. Cruz has been working alongside Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota). The bill has not yet been publicly released, but Cruz said its goal is to “address catastrophic risks involving biological or nuclear threats” associated with AI.
“We cannot stick our heads in the sand and pretend this technology isn’t happening. We need guardrails,” Cruz wrote online. “But America needs to lead. If China leads the world in AI, the whole world is in trouble.”
Sen. Maria Cantwell, the top Democrat on the commerce committee, appeared to signal concerns with the bill over the weekend, noting Republicans attempted to pass a 10-year ban on state AI regulation in last year’s tax-cut law.
“I welcome the urgency,” Cantwell wrote last week “But the answer is not a weak federal standard that becomes a backdoor for wiping out stronger state protections.”
In the House, lawmakers have introduced the Frontier Act, which would create a national framework for overseeing AI development, and the AI Kill Switch Act, which would require developers to maintain the ability to pause or shut down advanced AI systems.
Jeffries told reporters that “decisive action is necessary” and Democrats are working on new proposals that should be addressed swiftly. But he also said discussion about forming a special House committee to address AI risks would have to wait until after the Nov. 3 midterm elections.
“Our focus right now is on doing what is necessary so we can end this national nightmare that Donald Trump and Republicans have inflicted on the American people,” Jeffries said. “Every single policy decision that Republicans have made has made life more expensive for the American people.”
With Congress mired in gridlock for the immediate future, however, the responsibility of slowing AI development will rest primarily with AI companies themselves.
In a midnight post on X on Sunday, Altman said his support for slowing AI development doesn’t mean stopping it outright. He also urged the U.S. and China to work together to address risks posed by the technology.
“Progress has been rapid and will continue to be. But it should be slower than it otherwise could be; interventions like safety cases and monitoring have significant costs,” he said.
“Pacing will be well worth this cost; no amount of American competitive pressure should justify recklessness, or let capabilities get ahead of alignment and monitoring,” he added. “Where we will need the help of our government is for international coordination. But first we should do what we can ourselves.”
This story has been updated with new information.
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