Tech Giants Want Swamp To Slow Down AI Race, But It Doesn’t Seem All That Interested

As Big Tech calls for Washington to pull the emergency brake on artificial intelligence (AI), Congress has so far failed to get any legislation across the finish line.

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said on Sunday he believes AI companies, not Congress, have the responsibility to ensure safety in AI. Johnson’s comments follow after three major AI lab chief executives called to slow down AI’s rapid development to ensure greater safety.

Congress failed to strike a major deal on a Senate-led AI safety bill after Democrats insisted on tougher language in the legislation. Republicans have blamed Democrats for not “playing ball.”

“We cannot put a moratorium on this because China will overlap us, and that’s the challenge,” Johnson said on CNN. “It’s national security balanced with the immediate security of making sure the models are safe.”

“We need to handle this new technology like we have others in the past and make sure we’re doing everything we can responsibly to also not smother American innovation,” Johnson added, saying that the country can advance AI development and safety “simultaneously.”

Democratic leaders, meanwhile, have leaned into pushing for AI safety measures as the midterm elections rapidly approach and Americans remain concerned about risks surrounding AI.

Former President Barack Obama called on House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on Sunday as Jeffries said that House Democrats would convene soon to discuss options to regulate AI, according to The New York Times.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, Sens. Amy Klobuchar, Ted Cruz and Maria Cantwell’s AI safety bill stalled as Cantwell felt that the bill needed more stringent rules, according to Semafor.

“Republicans have created legal duties for companies to manage catastrophic risks and ensure that the government can verify they are doing so in a way that actually increases safety. Anthropic, safety groups, and Senator Cantwell are refusing to play ball,” a source familiar with the talks told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“They are unwilling to create a bipartisan product to give the federal government the power it needs while ensuring continued innovation and due process in the courts. Senator Cantwell is going as far as to require mandatory pre-deployment testing/fixes before down-dais Democrats can support,” the source, who was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive policy matters, continued.

The legislation establishes a legal duty for AI labs to mitigate AI safety issues as part of the bipartisan proposal, according to Politico. AI labs would submit frontier AI models for review and disclose the plans to the Commerce Department. If the Commerce Secretary believes companies have not sufficiently limited AI risk, then the department could bar the release of the model. It would also preempt some state AI laws, four people told the outlet.

An Anthropic spokesperson and Cantwell’s office did not respond to a DCNF request for comment.

Johnson’s office referred the DCNF to his comments at the Capitol on Monday, which stated that America has maintain its edge over China.

“If we slow down innovation too much, American innovation, we lose that critical race. And so this is not something that can be rushed into. We have been thinking about this, deliberating it, researching it, discussing it for a long, long time,” he remarked.

Cantwell, a Democrat representing Washington state, said in September on X she supports Republicans’ interest in AI safety; however, she added that a “weak federal standard” that acts as a “backdoor for wiping out stronger state protections” is not the solution.

“Meaningful legislation would require the most powerful AI models undergo testing by scientists and experts at our national laboratories to assess whether they could enable sophisticated cyberattacks or aid the development of biological or nuclear weapons,” Cantwell argued.

Vermont Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders in early September proposed legislation that would ban advanced AI models and pause AI development until the federal government creates a cabinet-level federal agency to review AI models for safety, according to a press release from Sanders’s office.

Top AI executive such as Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, xAI CEO Elon Musk and OpenAI chief Sam Altman called to pace the development of frontier AI models.

“Anthropic is unilaterally committing to the first of these steps. We’ll provide third-party evaluators with permanent, employee-level access to our systems, so that they can verify adherence to our safety measures, report on incidents, and assess models’ alignment during training,” Amodei wrote.

“I agree with Dario that we need to pace the frontier. This has been a primary topic of discussions we’ve had at OpenAI in recent weeks,” Altman wrote on X in September.

“More broadly, we’re eager to work with policymakers to make pacing effective for AI safety,” Sarah Heck, the head of public policy, wrote in September. “We are grateful to Senate leaders like Majority Leader Thune, Chairman Cruz, Senator Amy Klobuchar, and Representatives Obernolte, Trahan for their exceptional leadership in keeping AI safety at the forefront in Washington and look forward to continuing to work together on solutions. We also commend state lawmakers for moving with such urgency.”

However, President Donald Trump and former members of his administration believe the country does not need stringent regulation of AI.

“The only control or “guardrails” that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades! The Trump Administration has stopped AI “people” from doing bad, or potentially bad, “things,“ like Dario (Anthropic!), who is now pretending to be a “perfect little angel” – and we will continue to do so! We already have tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power over these companies,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China. WHOEVER WINS AI, WINS! We are leading China, and all others, and will continue to do so.”

“So go ahead and pace the frontier. You are the ones setting it. The easiest way not to build superintelligence is for you to agree not to build it. Demanding your preferred regulatory framework as the price of that will look like blackmail of the public and the political system. So just do it,” David Sacks, a former senior Trump White House official, said.