John Fetterman

U.S. Sens. Dave McCormick and John Fetterman on Friday roundly rejected calls to regulate artificial intelligence, pushing back on skepticism from within both their parties and touting AI development as an “existential competition” with China.

The two appeared via video call at the AI Horizons Pittsburgh Summit, a two-day event in the city’s Bakery Square complex, where a day earlier Gov. Josh Shapiro called for the federal government to oversee the AI industry.

The divergent takes by Pennsylvania’s three most powerful politicians come in the wake of recent concerns about the pace of AI development. A former Anthropic and OpenAI employee quit earlier this month over safety concerns and another said he worried AI would “kill all humans” within a decade amid several instances of models seemingly going rogue.

Leaders of Anthropic and OpenAI — two of the leading AI labs, both based in San Francisco — have, in turn, called for government oversight and a slowdown in development.

But Pennsylvania’s senators minimized the recent concerns, doubling down on fast-paced development and construction of data centers, which power AI, in Pennsylvania.

“Just in the last 10 days, you’ve seen this hysteria because a 27-year-old kid who worked for four months at Anthropic came out with this statement about the implications for humanind,” McCormick, R-Squirrel Hill, said, referencing former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon.

Fetterman — a Braddock Democrat increasingly alienated within his party — went further, repeatedly calling AI inevitable and comparing development of new models to the Manhattan Project, the World War II-era initiative that led to the creation of the atomic bomb.

He called for a cabinet-level position focused on AI.

“AI is inevitable, and data centers are part of that backbone of that,” Fetterman said. “It can be us or it can be the Chinese.”

The recent flurry of discussion around AI has seen politicians as disparate as Vermont U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, a democratic socialist, and U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, an outspoken right-wing lawmaker from Missouri, call for strict federal oversight of the AI industry.

But Fetterman dismissed what he called a message of “doom” from within his party, and said opposition to data centers — the highly unpopular physical manifestations of AI — had been cooked up foreign adversaries and paid actors.

Though McCormick, a Republican, said fears surrounding AI were “totally legitimate,” the senator said there was little the government could do in terms of regulation.

“The ability of the legislative branch to regulate exactly what we should do in the AI models absolutely doesn’t exist,” McCormick said.

Shapiro’s perspective

A longtime AI advocate, Shapiro — during a keynote address Thursday at the summit — said development had to be done in a “responsible, safe and ethical” way.

He attempted to chart a middle path that would see government regulators scrutinizing “frontier models,” which are the latest, unreleased versions of AI models, while allowing fast-paced development to continue.

He compared it to the government’s oversight of the pharmaceutical and aerospace industries.

“We need the federal government to establish the rules of the road,” he said. “We can’t kick the can down the road anymore.”

Though the governor reiterated the need to win the so-called race against China, he said the United States should seek to build an “international consensus” on development with the Chinese and others, saying the entente should begin as soon as next week.

Shapiro — up for election in November and widely viewed as a potential Democratic contender in 2028 — recently issued an executive order with stricter rules for data center developers.

So far, President Donald Trump has also shown little interest in regulating the AI industry.

The president recently called concerns around AI a “hoax” on social media, saying the only guardrail needed was a “STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT.”

Liz Huston, a White House spokeswoman, said in a statement to TribLive Thursday that the U.S. leads the world in AI innovation, and the president plans to keep it that way.

“The Trump Administration is committed to unleashing American innovation, supporting the safe and successful deployment of the world’s most advanced AI models, and protecting our national security,” the statement said.