Nvidia chief rebuffs AI panic even as Democrats demand action

California lawmakers are demanding Congress immediately pass artificial intelligence safety laws as panic grips much of the tech industry over fears of AI leading to human extinction.

Read more San Jose cop fired after using Flock to help cousin track woman, chief says

Reps. Sam Liccardo and George Whitesides, Democrats from California, co-signed a letter late Friday to House Speaker Mike Johnson urging the Republican leader to take immediate action on the “catastrophic risk” that the new technology poses and requesting that Congress not leave the capital until a new AI safety measure is passed. 

The letter came just days after an Anthropic safety researcher resigned from the San Francisco company and warned that there’s a 10% chance AI could kill all humans within the next decade. The disclosure set off a wave of panic across the country. 

President Donald Trump and Johnson downplayed those fears over the weekend and emphasized that if American regulators slow down AI development, the U.S. could risk falling behind China. 

“We cannot put a moratorium on this because China will overlap us,” Johnson told CNN anchor Jake Tapper on Sunday. He called on the AI companies to instead establish guardrails themselves. 

“The problem is they’re all competitors. Each one of them wants to maintain an edge over the others,” he said on CNN. “… We need to get them all in a room at the same time and agree on what the guardrails are. That’s the only way to do this.” 

Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, validated some of his former staffer’s concerns in a letter published Saturday that called for the industry to slow down on development to allow room for safety measures, including permanent third-party observers inside the companies and new government safety standards. Amodei stressed that without such guardrails, the internet could be taken over by rogue agents within a year. 

Elon Musk, whose SpaceX is a leader in AI, wrote in a post on X that “Dario is right.” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also expressed support Saturday for Amodei’s essay and announced OpenAI will delay its public listing over AI safety concerns.

The House, which plans to take the last two weeks of September and the entire month of October off, is already considering multiple AI safety bills. 

Rep. Ted Lieu, a California Democrat, proposed a bill that would impose a “kill switch” to AI, aiming to create a way to immediately shut down an AI model if it becomes dangerous. Rep. Jay Obernolte, a California Republican, has proposed creating a national framework for how to regulate the development and deployment of new technology models. 

Read more Human remains exposed by drought identified as Bay Area woman

Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has called on Congress to go even further, introducing a bill that would pause all AI development and prevent any AI intelligence from surpassing that of human intelligence. The first version of the bill proposed up to 20 years of prison time if anyone violates the law.

Congress already has plans to vote this week on a bill that would stop data centers from increasing Americans’ energy costs. 

Not all tech leaders agree with the AI panic. Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, which sells many of the computer chips that power the AI race, has been more skeptical that the AI models will kill all of humanity. He downplayed the anxieties at a Goldman Sachs conference on Thursday and suggested that the cybersecurity industry has financial incentives to create fear about online safety.

“And what better way to create demand than to create a problem?” he said. “Who doesn’t want their market to be hysterical about their product and line up around the corner for it?”

The Trump administration does not appear interested in moving fast on AI regulation. In May, Trump postponed an executive order that would have created a framework for AI developers to disclose to the government any new developments before coming public with them, as he said it would compromise the country’s competitiveness. He later signed a watered-down executive order that asks AI companies to voluntarily submit their products to national security risk reviews.

David Sacks, Trump’s AI czar who is personally invested in at least 449 AI-related companies, wrote a lengthy X post on Saturday accusing Amodei and Altman of being self interested in their calls for a slowdown and telling them to just pause their AI development without government intervention. Trump wrote on Truth Social on Monday morning that Amodei is “pretending to be a ‘perfect little angel’” and likened the fears around AI to a “conspiracy.”

Vice President J.D. Vance called it “weird” that tech leaders are asking Congress to regulate them. He was skeptical that the move is a “bit of a Trojan horse.”