Obama urges Democrats to have a clear plan for AI safeguards

Former President Barack Obama said Democrats need to make artificial intelligence one of their central agendas and have a very clear plan to address concerns about the technology's economic impact and safety, according to a TechCrunch report citing The New York Times.

Obama made the comments on Thursday at a Democratic fundraising event, where he was interviewed by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. His office provided a partial transcript of the exchange to the Times.

Asked how congressional Democrats should approach AI, Obama said that once Democrats regain the House majority, they need to put together a framework for a very public conversation.

He offered his own read on the stakes: the technology is moving very fast in private hands, and it can be dangerous if policymakers fail to get on top of it, while it can be beneficial if they do. He pointed to drug development as one area where AI could accelerate progress toward curing diseases.

In a statement, Jeffries said Obama is correct that decisive action must be taken on artificial intelligence, adding that Republicans have abdicated their responsibility to govern on behalf of the American people.

The Times also reported that Obama has offered himself as a sounding board to AI executives, and that he has already spoken with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

The remarks land amid rising concern over AI safety, particularly after an AI researcher resigned from Anthropic and claimed the leading AI companies are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.

On Saturday, Amodei outlined an approach to pacing the frontier that would give independent safety evaluators access to leading companies and models and develop common safety standards across firms. Altman and Musk both responded positively on social media, with Altman saying OpenAI would also commit to having independent evaluators with employee-like access. The former president's intervention puts AI regulation at the center of the Democratic policy debate, at a moment when the industry's own leaders are publicly urging caution.

President Donald Trump also weighed in on Sunday, telling reporters at an Irish golf event, according to Bloomberg, that the United States is the most sophisticated country in the world and that he wants to keep it that way because whoever wins AI wins. Trump added that guardrails are possible, but that a lot of negative forces are pushing the AI debate in directions they should not.