The poles of American politics are coming together over artificial intelligence. Left-wing socialist Bernie Sanders and right-wing strategist Steve Bannon have joined forces to push for more human control over the rapidly-evolving technology.
Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont, and Bannon, a former Trump White House adviser, will both appear at the "Pro-Human Assembly" in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, alongside a diverse set of speakers, to convince Congress to work faster to curb the impact of AI.
The rare pairing of a progressive leader and a MAGA voice is a sign of how AI is upending political alliances.
The assembly – an all-day event – is organized by the Future of Life Institute, a nonprofit advocacy group that issued 33 principles in March to guide their pro-human movement. Those principles include that humans must remain in charge of AI, people should retain agency and liberty and AI companies should be held accountable.
The event comes at a time when concerns over the spread of data centers, the growing influence of AI and warnings from AI insiders caused leaders at Anthropic and OpenAI to call for a slow down in AI development to keep the technology under human control. At the same time, lawmakers have been urging House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., to pass AI safeguards.
Johnson has said he supports some guardrails for AI, but it's the companies, not Congress, that should be responsible for policing safety.
"We cannot put a moratorium on this because China will overlap us, and that's the challenge," Johnson told CNN over the weekend. "If Congress just races in and does some sort of emergency session to try to regulate AI, we will lose the race to China, and that is a threat to every single American."
But in a nod to voter angst over AI, the House is slated to vote on legislation as early as Tuesday addressing one slice of the issue -- the proliferation of data centers. The bill, known as the Ratepayer Protection Act, is designed to shield Americans from spikes in energy costs tied to the construction of data centers.
Even as President Trump has consistently championed AI and data centers, lawmakers and candidates from both sides of the aisle have been speaking to voters' concerns about the risks of AI to society. But after AI companies called for a slowdown this weekend, Trump quickly retorted that the industry warnings were exaggerated.
"We're leading China in AI, we're the most sophisticated country in the world, and frankly, I want to keep it that way because whoever wins AI, wins," Trump told reporters on Sunday. "And we can put guardrails, we can do this and that. But I think you have a lot of negative forces that are bringing it up that shouldn't be bringing it up."
Tuesday's event has also attracted Hollywood stars Ashley Judd and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who have advocated for stronger AI controls, as well as religious leaders from various denominations and child safety advocates, including parents of children who died by suicide after talking to AI chatbots.
"By centering our common humanity, we maintain a space grounded in trust and collaborative problem-solving to chart a pro-human future with AI," the organizers wrote at the end of their schedule and speakers' list.
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