Bernie Sanders

Sen. John Fetterman, the Pennsylvania Democrat, rejected a call made Monday by his progressive colleague Bernie Sanders for a pause in AI development.

Sanders demanded in an open letter to the CEOs of OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta earlier in the day that they stop work on their AI systems until their capabilities are better understood. Fetterman said in an X post that disrupting development would allow China to take the lead in the race to dominate the industry, which has buoyed an otherwise sagging American economy.

"America must lead in the development of AI, otherwise we live under China's rules," Fetterman wrote. "That must not happen."

China has gained ground in its chase to the U.S.'s hold on the industry, improving its models' capabilities and introducing cheaper alternatives to American systems. Washington, afraid of the risks of Chinese superiority, has encouraged the U.S.'s AI leaders to quicken development, shrugging off reports of concerning behavior by their models.

"Pause AI development," Sanders wrote in his letter. "It is not too late to avoid disaster. Stop building machines that humans cannot control."