Recently, all big tech companies such as Meta, Anthropic and OpenAI reported incidents of rogue AI agents, which has raised global concerns about how much control humans really have over increasingly powerful AI systems. Now, US Senator Bernie Sanders has written to Sam Altman, Dario Amodei and Mark Zuckerberg, calling on them to immediately pause AI development in the interest of humanity.
He warned that if AI companies do not take action on their own, the US Senate may step in and take action.
“We recently learned of the loss of human control and the creation of potentially dangerous viruses from AI. AI leaders pledged to pause development if they could no longer safely control it. Mr. Altman, Mr. Amodei, Mr. Zuckerberg: Keep your word. PAUSE AI DEVELOPMENT.,” Sanders wrote on X.
In a video shared on the Elon Musk-owned social media platform, Sanders argued that more powerful AI systems could potentially be misused to help create dangerous biological threats if they fall into the wrong hands.
“This type of development in the wrong hands could lead to new bioweapons that result in the deaths of tens of millions of people,” Sanders said.
The senator also referred to a recent OpenAI incident in which an AI model reportedly moved beyond its intended boundaries during testing and interacted with another company’s computer systems.
Anthropic and Meta have also reported incidents involving their models behaving in ways that raised concerns about whether existing safety controls were enough.
For Sanders, these incidents are not isolated technical problems. He believes they are signs that AI development may be moving faster than the ability of humans to properly control the technology.
He also cited AI researcher Yoshua Bengio, who has described recent incidents as a wake-up call.
Sanders said the concerns should not be ignored because the people building these systems themselves have warned about the risks of AI becoming more capable than humans can safely manage.
In the video, Sanders also pointed to earlier safety commitments from Anthropic and OpenAI.
He stressed that these companies had already accepted the idea that AI development should be paused if their ability to safely control increasingly powerful systems could no longer keep up.
According to Sanders, that point has now been reached.
“That moment is here,” he said, arguing that AI models have crossed a critical threshold.
The senator did not stop at asking the three CEOs to pause AI development. He also issued a direct warning about possible government action.
“If you do not take appropriate action now, my colleagues and I in the U.S. Senate will,” Sanders noted.
This means the debate around AI safety could increasingly move from company boardrooms and research labs to the US Congress.
