Bernie Sanders

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont called on the nation’s top artificial intelligence companies to pause development of the technology, saying the corporations have already lost control of models that could cause “potentially cataclysmic results” for millions of people.

In a letter to the chief executives of OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta on Monday, Mr. Sanders cited statements by the companies saying they would halt or delay new models if the technology became too risky to safely manage. He argued that threshold had recently been passed.

“It is not too late to avoid disaster,” wrote Mr. Sanders. “Stop building machines that humans cannot control.”

A separate letter released on Monday by a group of House Democrats called on House Speaker Mike Johnson to “immediately schedule” hearings with the CEOs of the largest A.I. companies.

Politicians are increasingly focusing on A.I. amid growing unease from voters who worry that the technology will raise their electricity costs, eliminate their jobs and hurt the value of their retirement savings if the industry falters. Much of their attention has been on banning or limiting the spread of data centers, which some Americans blame for rising energy bills and increased pollution.

The two letters signal that progressive Democrats want to go further to regulate the development of the technology itself.

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