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Hill voices say AI chiefs' boom-and-doom talk is a political liability
Axios reports lawmakers in both parties say AI company leaders are becoming a political liability by mixing prosperity claims with warnings of existential risk.
Lawmakers and Capitol Hill staff in both parties say leaders of major artificial intelligence companies are becoming a political liability, Axios reported Saturday, as summarized on Techmeme1.
Sources close to the White House and Congress, Axios said, described AI executives as swinging between claims of shared prosperity and warnings of existential danger, sometimes in the same public appearances.
Sen. John Curtis, R-Utah, told Axios it was obvious the industry was "tripping over their own shoelaces in trying to sell the value of this to the public".
Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., told Axios that CEOs such as OpenAI's Sam Altman were asking the public to accept some harms for the technology's benefits, and that billionaires should not be trusted to make safety decisions.
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., told Axios that Democrats should treat industry political spending and data centers as campaign issues, tying public unease about jobs to President Donald Trump's ties with tech executives.
Axios also cited a letter from Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, to Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei that complained about what Moreno called panic-inducing commentary.
The Axios account said administration officials were again frustrated with Anthropic over how it disclosed model safety incidents affecting government websites after a late-September gathering with Trump, and over an AI safety bill draft that included federal preemption of state laws and a high death threshold for a catastrophic incident.
Anthropic, according to that reporting, said it briefed the White House and affected agencies once reviews were complete.
OpenAI, Axios reported, is also a target of a developing Federal Trade Commission inquiry; New York Assembly member Alex Bores said OpenAI policy proposals were vague and aimed at blocking state rules, while an OpenAI spokesperson said the company was talking with both parties and statehouses about AI's benefits.
Axios said those efforts had not shifted public opinion, citing a recent poll that a majority of Americans view AI as bad for society.
