‘Hit the brakes’: Bernie Sanders urges Trump, Xi to pause AI before it’s too late

Sanders wrote on X: "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.

The US Senator further said: "At their upcoming AI summit, Trump and Xi must negotiate a treaty to pause AI and ban superintelligence before it is too late."

Sanders' comments came days after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and xAI CEO Elon Musk called for greater caution over the pace of AI development.

The call was first made by Amodei, who argued that the pace at which AI capabilities are improving should be slowed.

"We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models. Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain," Amodei wrote in an essay.

Altman quickly backed Amodei's position, writing on X: "I agree with Dario that we need to pace the frontier. This has been a primary topic of discussions we've had at OpenAI in recent weeks."

"Committing to having independent evaluators with employee-like access is a great idea, and we will do the same. We'll have more to share soon," he added.

Musk also responded on X, writing: "I've been sounding the alarm on AI for a long time."

Meanwhile, a senior Anthropic researcher has warned that he believes there is more than a 10% chance that artificial intelligence could kill all humans within the next decade.

Evan Hubinger, Alignment Science Lead at Anthropic, shared his assessment on X, writing: "We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10% within the next decade."

Hubinger also raised concerns about the industry's preparedness to address the risks posed by increasingly powerful AI systems.

"I believe Anthropic is trying its best, but we do not yet have a plan to solve alignment for superintelligence and are not clearly on track to," he wrote.

Who is Evan Hubinger?

Hubinger is an Alignment Science Lead at Anthropic. According to his X profile, he has previously worked with OpenAI, Google, Yelp and Ripple.

He made the remarks while responding to an X post by Jacob Coxon, who recently resigned from Anthropic.

Coxon had also raised concerns about the potential risks posed by advanced AI systems.

"The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt. If anything, many executives and senior researchers will couch their phrasing in the press to sound sensible - but I hear the same people express fear privately. No other human activity poses this level of danger," Coxon wrote on X.