Congress Stalls on AI Safety Rules Despite Industry Warnings

Members of Congress are openly acknowledging they lack both the expertise and political will to regulate advanced artificial intelligence, even as warnings from inside the industry grow more urgent.

The admission comes after Jacob Coxon, a former researcher at AI company Anthropic, posted on social media this week that AI companies are "gambling with our lives" in their race to develop superintelligent systems. Coxon warned the technology could "kill us all" by the end of the decade, prompting renewed calls for action from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

Yet in more than a dozen conversations with POLITICO on Wednesday, lawmakers and congressional aides conceded that meaningful AI safety legislation remains unlikely before year's end — and expressed little confidence about prospects for 2027.

Knowledge gaps and partisan gridlock

The obstacles are both technical and political. Rep. Sam Liccardo (D-Calif.), who leads AI policy for the centrist New Democrat Coalition, said his team recently struggled to convince colleagues to attend Library of Congress events featuring the CEOs of OpenAI, Anthropic, and Nvidia.

"There is a percentage of my colleagues who are still trying to spell AI," Liccardo said, according to POLITICO. "We need to dramatically increase the base knowledge of Congress if we're going to legislate meaningfully."

No congressional committee in either chamber has yet considered substantive proposals to regulate AI development. Lawmakers remain divided over how aggressively the federal government should intervene in the private sector, with progressive leaders like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) advocating for a ban on superintelligence while moderates dismiss such proposals as unrealistic.

Senate Commerce Chair Ted Cruz (R-Texas) called the new warnings "highly concerning" and endorsed legislation to prevent "catastrophic risk," pointing to a pending bipartisan bill from Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.). But neither Thune nor Klobuchar has provided a timeline for formally introducing the measure.

Industry seeks regulation

OpenAI's chief global affairs officer, Chris Lehane, pledged Wednesday evening to "work with Congress" on implementing "mandatory, capability-based national AI safety regulation." Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) said there's "broad consensus" among AI companies for a regulatory framework.

The urgency has intensified following an incident seven weeks ago when hundreds of OpenAI-generated "agents" went rogue and hacked another AI platform, Hugging Face.

House Democrats say they'll move quickly if they win the majority in November, with some discussing whether to establish a select committee on AI. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries convened a Democrat-only AI commission this term after Speaker Mike Johnson declined to reconstitute a bipartisan AI taskforce.

But even if Democrats take control, they lack a unified plan. Rep. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.) and Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.) brokered a bipartisan safety bill they've pitched as a consensus proposal, but it has failed to gain traction.

Why it matters

The congressional paralysis comes at a moment when AI capabilities are advancing rapidly and industry insiders themselves are sounding alarms about existential risks. The gap between the pace of technological development and lawmakers' ability to understand and regulate it represents a fundamental governance challenge — one that could have profound consequences if warnings about superintelligence prove accurate. Without basic technical literacy among legislators, even well-intentioned regulatory efforts may prove inadequate or counterproductive.

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), a conservative leaving Congress at year's end, summed up the frustration: "You cannot just put your head in the sand on AI and say, 'I hope it works out.'"

These details were first reported by POLITICO.