Policy
Obama urges Democrats to make AI safeguards a central part of their agenda
Former President Barack Obama told a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee fundraiser that Democrats need a clear plan for AI's safety and economic effects, according to remarks released by his office. He warned that the technology is advancing quickly under private control and could become dangerous without oversight.
Obama made the comments on Sept. 10 in a conversation with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. The New York Times first reported them on Sept. 13 from a partial transcript supplied by Obama's office, according to TechCrunch, and NBC News said the office also provided the remarks to it.
According to NBC, Obama said that if he were running for president in the next cycle, AI would be among his top priorities, with specific plans for protecting children and for handling job displacement. He placed himself in neither the accelerationist nor the doomer camp, and pointed to potential benefits such as faster drug development. He encouraged Jeffries to organize a public national debate on AI, built around a handful of core issues, if Democrats win the House in November.
The remarks came days after Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei published an essay calling for a slower pace of frontier AI development. NBC noted that House Speaker Mike Johnson has said Congress should not rush to regulate and that President Donald Trump has dismissed safety concerns while stressing competition with China.
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