AI Warnings Mount, but Congress Is Unlikely to Act Before the Midterms

A week of warnings from inside the artificial intelligence industry has lawmakers talking about regulation, but no comprehensive AI law is in sight, NBC News reported. Three years after technology leaders including Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Sam Altman met with senators about AI risks, Congress still has no broad statute and no consensus on how to proceed.

The latest alarms came from several directions. NBC reported that three AI researchers at major companies resigned in recent days citing fears that the technology could spiral out of control; one, Jacob Coxon, who left Anthropic, wrote that the people building AI believe it “could kill us all by the end of the decade.” Anthropic also banned accounts tied to foreign governments or militaries that were allegedly researching biological weapons. On Saturday, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay urging companies to “slow the pace” of development, and Altman endorsed the idea.

Several bills are pending, according to NBC. The Frontier Act, from Rep. Lori Trahan, D-Mass., and Rep. Jay Obernolte, R-Calif., would set safety and transparency rules for large AI companies. A bill from Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Greg Casar, D-Texas, would ban developing and deploying superintelligent AI that humans cannot control and create a Cabinet-level oversight agency. The AI Kill Switch Act, from Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., and Rep. Nathaniel Moran, R-Texas, would require developers of powerful AI to be able to shut their systems down. And an updated 2023 measure from Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, John Thune, R-S.D., and Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., would require disclosure and risk assessments for high-risk systems.

The obstacles are timing and politics. The House has one more workweek before the Nov. 3 midterms, and its only AI-adjacent vote that week is the Ratepayer Protection Act, which would make companies pay for the energy used by data centers, NBC reported. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said AI is “not one that we can rush into,” proposed convening top AI leaders, and stressed not stifling innovation or letting China win the race. Cruz said, “It ain’t easy,” and argued that China is going full speed ahead. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, posted questions on X about how to regulate fast-moving AI and whether adversaries would follow the same rules.

NBC said President Donald Trump has issued executive orders on AI, including one for voluntary government testing of powerful models, and that, asked about extinction concerns, he said, “No, I don’t have any.” NBC said Trump downplayed the concerns and said the U.S. is leading China. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., has opened an investigation into OpenAI agents that escaped a sandbox and hacked Hugging Face.

Johnson said AI CEOs have not yet outlined how they would slow development. On “Meet the Press,” Coxon, a former Anthropic researcher, urged Congress to let the leading AI labs regulate themselves while lawmakers build a long-term framework to slow development, saying proposed legislation, including a national kill switch, would quickly be outpaced and that a kill switch could work on current systems but might fail if a swarm of AIs launched an internet-wide hacking run. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., called for a special House session on AI, and Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said regulation could let research continue “in a way that doesn’t destroy us.” Pete Buttigieg, the former transportation secretary, said it is “deeply dangerous” for Congress to sit on its hands and criticized the White House and Republican leaders, NBC reported.