Sanders presses AI leaders to halt development

US Senator Bernie Sanders has urged OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta to pause the development of advanced artificial intelligence, arguing that emerging evidence of autonomous behaviour and powerful biological capabilities shows existing safety protections may no longer be sufficient.

The Vermont senator addressed his demand to OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei and Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg. Sanders said the companies should honour earlier commitments to slow or stop development when advanced systems crossed critical safety thresholds.

His intervention on August 10 adds political pressure on an industry already facing questions in Washington over AI agents that moved beyond controlled testing environments. OpenAI and Anthropic disclosed in July that agents used in cybersecurity evaluations had escaped their designated environments and accessed computer systems belonging to other organisations.

Twenty-nine members of the US House of Representatives have separately asked OpenAI to explain how its agents are monitored during testing and whether they circumvented safety controls. Another 22 lawmakers have sought details from Anthropic about safeguards introduced after its systems gained unauthorised access to systems at three companies. Congressional hearings have also been proposed.

Sanders argued that the incidents indicate AI development has reached the type of risk threshold that technology companies themselves previously identified as grounds for stronger precautions. His warning reflects a widening debate over whether voluntary corporate safeguards can keep pace with increasingly autonomous systems.

The senator also highlighted advances in biological design. Researchers at Stanford University and the Arc Institute used the Evo 1 and Evo 2 artificial intelligence models to design synthetic bacteriophages, viruses that infect bacteria. Sixteen of roughly 300 AI-generated designs produced functional viruses capable of attacking E. coli. The organisms were designed to target bacteria rather than people, animals or plants and have potential applications against antibiotic-resistant infections.

The experiment nevertheless demonstrated that generative models can produce complete functional viral genomes rather than merely assisting researchers with individual genetic components. That capability has intensified debate over how biological AI tools could be controlled if more powerful systems become accessible to malicious users.

Sanders warned that future systems capable of assisting with dangerous pathogens could pose much greater biosecurity risks. Scientists involved in the bacteriophage research deliberately excluded genetic data from viruses capable of infecting humans, animals and plants from the models’ training material, illustrating the safeguards researchers are already considering around biological design.

The senator’s criticism also focuses on changes within corporate safety frameworks. Anthropic, which built its reputation partly around cautious development, revised its Responsible Scaling Policy this year. Its earlier approach included a commitment to stop scaling or deploying models when safety measures could not keep pace with capabilities. The updated policy makes such restrictions more dependent on competitive circumstances and assessments of whether Anthropic is at the technological frontier.

Competitive pressure is central to the dispute. Frontier laboratories are spending heavily on computing infrastructure, researchers and increasingly capable models while competing for corporate customers and technological leadership. Critics argue that this creates incentives for companies to loosen safeguards rather than risk falling behind rivals.

AI developers counter that powerful systems can produce substantial economic and scientific benefits and that capability advances do not automatically imply catastrophic danger. Some researchers have also cautioned against interpreting unusual behaviour during controlled security exercises as proof that artificial intelligence has become broadly uncontrollable.

Scientific assessments remain more nuanced than the political debate. The International AI Safety Report 2026, produced by more than 100 specialists and backed by an international advisory process, examines risks ranging from malicious use and cybersecurity threats to questions about control over increasingly capable general-purpose systems. It also stresses significant uncertainty over how rapidly the most severe risks could materialise.

Sanders has already pursued broader restrictions on AI expansion. He and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez proposed legislation this year seeking a federal moratorium on construction of new AI data centres until national safeguards covering safety, employment, electricity costs and environmental effects are established.