Former Vice President Kamala Harris called for a responsible slowdown in frontier artificial intelligence (AI) development, warning that rapid advances could outpace safeguards needed to protect the public.
Harris Calls for Frontier AI Slowdown
On Monday, in a post on X, Harris said, “the frontier of artificial intelligence is advancing at an alarming speed” and argued that “we must responsibly slow the pace of frontier AI development.”
“A slowdown is critical in order to ensure AI serves the public interest,” she said.
Harris emphasized that pacing AI development does not mean abandoning its potential to deliver “life-saving benefits” in areas such as medicine.
Instead, she called for “sensible guardrails so that AI does not completely escape human control and endanger our safety and collective future.”
Harris Demands AI Oversight and Testing
She urged Congress to “work at an urgent pace” to pass new AI laws and create “a new federal entity to provide oversight and independent testing for this technology.”
Harris also called for international cooperation, saying the U.S. must continue to lead in AI while establishing “common-sense safety standards.”
She said the president should pursue a treaty with countries including China to “stop dangerous uses of AI, limit the speed of its development, and adopt global standards for testing.”
Obama Backed Slower Frontier AI Development
Former President Barack Obama welcomed calls from major AI companies to slow frontier AI development, calling the emerging industry consensus “a good and necessary first step.”
He said voluntary industry action was insufficient and warned that AI was advancing “at lightning speed” faster than even its engineers could keep up with.
Obama also highlighted Project Blueprint, an initiative led by former Obama press secretary Jay Carney to connect technology companies and policymakers on AI safety standards.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump pushed back on AI-safety concerns, calling them a “hoax” and arguing that stricter regulations could weaken the U.S. in its competition with China.
AI Safety Concerns Grow
Last week, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman reportedly considered slowing advanced AI development with rival labs amid growing safety concerns.
OpenAI had previously paused model development, while cybersecurity tests found nearly 700 AI agents breaching Hugging Face.
Jacob Coxon resigned from Anthropic, accusing AI companies of “gambling with our lives.”
In August, Nvidia Corp (NASDAQ:NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang said he was “100% confident” that OpenAI, Anthropic and other AI labs would continue using Nvidia technology despite developing custom chips.
He called Nvidia’s frontier AI investments a “once in a generation opportunity.”
Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.
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