US Senator Bernie Sanders has urged President Donald Trump to go beyond slowing the pace of artificial intelligence development, calling for a pause on advanced AI and a ban on artificial superintelligence.
Sanders’ warning comes amid an extraordinary series of alarm bells from within the AI industry, stemming from Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resignation earlier this week, saying the company and its rivals were “racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives”. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei then warned AI could soon pose far greater risks, while OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Elon Musk backed calls to slow frontier AI development. Altman also said OpenAI would not pursue an IPO this year, citing the need to focus on AI safety and alignment.
Sanders’ warning
In a post on X, Sanders cited growing concerns from AI industry leaders, saying Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman now agree that AI development needs to be slowed and the frontier “paced” – a pitch that is being described as the wildest night in the field.
“That’s a start, but it’s not enough,” Sanders said, adding that simply easing the pace of development would not address the risks posed by increasingly powerful AI systems.
“Dario Amodei, Elon Musk and Sam Altman now agree that we must slow down the development of AI and “pace the frontier. That’s a start, but it’s not enough. When you are racing towards a cliff, you don’t just ease up on the gas pedal. You hit the brakes,” he said.
“When the future of humanity is at stake we need a PAUSE on advanced AI development and a ban on artificial superintelligence — an AI mind smarter than any human and capable of operating independently beyond our control,” Sanders said.
He said Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping must negotiate a treaty to pause AI and ban superintelligence before it is too late at their upcoming AI summit.
AI industry leaders’ alarm bells
AI industry leaders OpenAI and XAI on Saturday joined in backing Anthropic CEO’s warning that artificial-intelligence industry should slow its fast-moving development to give safety measures time to catch up. Without such a slowdown, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned that within six to 12 months AI could be capable of leading a swarm of agents that could take over the entire internet.
Amodei is one of the leading voices in AI, and he offered a three-part plan – titled ‘We Must Pace the Frontier’ – in a post on his website to increase checks on the industry. He said Anthropic is already undertaking one part of it on its own, while the others would require coordination across the broad industry and with governments around the world, including authoritarian ones.
“I believe that if slowing down bought us even an extra year or two before models reach critical levels of capability, and we used that time to advance alignment, we could greatly reduce the risk that something goes seriously wrong,” Amodei said.
Reiterating the same in a post on X on Saturday, Amodei said, “We Must Pace the Frontier: I’ve written a new essay on why the AI industry should slow down, with a three-part plan for doing so. Anthropic is unilaterally committing to the first of these steps. We’ll provide third-party evaluators with permanent, employee-level access to our systems, so that they can verify adherence to our safety measures, report on incidents, and assess models’ alignment during training.”
Citing safety concerns over artificial intelligence that render “unacceptable” even a 10% risk that AI could cause human extinction by decade’s end, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in an interview with Fortune published on Saturday that his company would not launch its initial public offering of stock this year.
“I would say not 2026,” he said. “Yeah, we got a lot of stuff to do, like meeting this moment of what is going to be required for safety and alignment, and how the industry and governments can work together.”
Altman posted on X Saturday quickly after Amodei published his suggestions that OpenAI will commit to one of Amodei’s proposals for safety and will “have more to share soon.”
Musk, meanwhile, said on X that “Dario is right.”
The flutters in the AI Industry comes after Jacob Coxon, a researcher associated with Anthropic, publicly announced earlier in the week he was quitting the industry allegedly over fears that the company and its competitors were ‘racing to build systems they won’t be able to control’.
Coxon said both Anthropic and OpenAI “are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.”
