By Courtney Rozen
WASHINGTON, Sept 14 (Reuters) - Progressive U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders and Trump ally Steve Bannon will together on Tuesday call for restrictions on AI systems, uniting two political adversaries around concerns that the technology will harm humans.
The two will speak at the same Washington gathering on Tuesday, as concern about AI's risks spreads beyond Washington and Silicon Valley. Recent surveys have found majorities of Americans worry the technology could be used to eliminate
jobs, raise costs for families or otherwise cause social harm.
Residents in several states have also challenged proposals for new data centers, a critical component of the AI boom. 77% of Americans worry AI-driven data centers will raise electricity costs, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll published in June.
Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon captured public attention last week when he said he resigned from the company, in part because the "people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade."
Bannon, a longtime ally of U.S. President Donald Trump, has criticized Trump’s approach to overseeing AI, placing the blame for the president's unwillingness to regulate the technology squarely on tech companies. On his Monday podcast, Bannon said Congress should not pass laws that prohibit states from enforcing their own rules for the technology.
“The American people are not going to be supplicants to these tech oligarchs,” Bannon said.
Reuters previously reported that U.S. senators are debating a bill that would block states from enforcing their own laws governing certain risks posed by AI models. Previously, efforts to restrict state AI laws failed in the U.S. Senate.
Trump on Monday downplayed concerns expressed by industry leaders over the weekend about the misuse of artificial intelligence harming people, saying the U.S. already has guardrails in place for the powerful technology.
Sanders and Bannon will be joined by AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler and Walter Kim, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, who are also slated to give speeches, according to event organizers. The AFL-CIO is the largest federation of labor unions in the U.S.
Sanders, along with House progressive Rep. Greg Casar, has called for the U.S. to pass legislation halting development of AI tools that are capable of “overthrowing or undermining the U.S. government,” until the government creates a new agency to police the technology. Casar and Sanders have not released specifics.
(Reporting by Courtney Rozen; Editing by David Gregorio and Nick Zieminski)
