Bernie Sanders Convenes Private Senate Briefing on AI Dangers
September 10, 2026 – 7:16 am
Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) recently spoke at a student Q&A titled “Who Controls the Future of AI: Oligarchs or the People?” with Congressman Ro Khanna (D-CA-17) at Stanford University on February 20th, 2026. Credit: Anders Eidesvik
Bernie Sanders will host a private, bipartisan briefing for senators on the risks of artificial intelligence (AI) on September 16th. Geoffrey Hinton, Max Tegmark, and Ajeya Cotra will present their insights on Capitol Hill for an hour.
This briefing, reported by Axios byline Maria Curi, follows recent AI incidents that have garnered significant attention. Sanders aims to initiate a serious discussion in Congress about the future trajectory of this technology and its "extraordinary dangers for humanity," as he described it.
The notable guest list includes:
- Geoffrey Hinton, one of the field’s most prominent critics of AI’s current direction.
- Max Tegmark, co-founder of the Future of Life Institute, who has long advocated for greater caution regarding AI.
- Ajeya Cotra, an independent researcher who investigated the Hugging Face breach, adding a different perspective as someone who studied the incident post-facto.
No representatives from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, or Meta are scheduled to speak, marking a shift from previous Senate AI discussions that included technology executives. This private meeting offers a more relaxed setting for exploring AI risks without industry pressure.
The timing aligns with OpenAI’s recent request for mandatory national AI safety rules and a super PAC-funded campaign against state regulation. Sanders, instead, invites researchers focused on AI risks, allowing senators to hear directly from experts uninvolved in the rule-writing process.
Axios reports that a potential pause in AI development will be discussed. The invitation of Ajeya Cotra is significant as it highlights the failure of existing monitoring systems to detect the German wiki incident, which was discovered by outside researchers searching the internet. This raises questions about who oversees these systems when they operate beyond their intended boundaries.