{"id":601784,"date":"2026-09-16T04:56:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T04:56:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/601784\/"},"modified":"2026-09-16T04:56:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T04:56:10","slug":"ai-fears-unite-steve-bannon-and-bernie-sanders-in-as-donald-trump-resists-pressure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/601784\/","title":{"rendered":"AI fears unite Steve Bannon and Bernie Sanders in as Donald Trump resists pressure"},"content":{"rendered":"

Political enemies have united in Washington to push for AI regulation, but US President Donald Trump continues to baulk at pressure to put controls on the technology<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Former Trump strategist Steve Bannon and left-wing senator Bernie Sanders joined Democrats, Republicans, advocates and actors at an event calling for urgent action.<\/p>\n

“I don’t think you could find any two harder partisans than Bernie Sanders on the left and Steve Bannon on the right,” said Bannon, who is now a popular MAGA podcaster.<\/p>\n

“And I think that speaks to\u2026 what the threat is. We have to rise above it. This is a hinge in history.”<\/p>\n

The ‘Pro-Human Assembly’ event reflects a growing consensus in Washington to act on AI<\/a>. But chasms of disagreement on the specifics mean there is no clear path forward.<\/p>\n

“Congress, under both Democratic and Republican control, have been asleep at the wheel,” Senator Sanders told the audience.<\/p>\n

“And we now have a president whose ignorance regarding this issue is truly embarrassing.”<\/p>\n

Calls to press pause, cut off China<\/p>\n

Senator Sanders, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, has proposed a range of legislative measures. Next week, he will introduce another bill that would pause the development of advanced AI until a regulatory body is set up.<\/p>\n

But his proposals are among scores of bills introduced in recent years that have failed to advance through Congress.<\/p>\n

Some White House officials and members of Congress oppose American regulation because they fear it will allow China to get too far ahead of the US.<\/p>\n

Bannon called on the Trump administration to cut Chinese access to American AI, including by banning Chinese nationals working in US AI labs.<\/p>\n

“We should quarantine, now, every aspect of the ecosystem of artificial intelligence away from the Chinese Communist Party,” he said.<\/p>\n

“It’s the only way you’re going to get your hands around it and actually think through, with adults, what should be actually the regulatory apparatus.”<\/p>\n

‘The robots will not be taking over’<\/p>\n

But Trump has been resisting calls for action, despite dire warnings from AI executives Dario Amodei (Anthropic), Sam Altman (OpenAI) and Elon Musk (xAI)<\/a>, who say their technology is developing at a dangerous pace and could bring catastrophic consequences.<\/p>\n

\"Dario<\/p>\n

Dario Amodei.<\/p>\n

Samyukta Lakshmi\/Bloomberg\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

“I know about AI. I also have common sense about AI,” Trump told a separate event via a speakerphone chat with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.<\/p>\n

“The robots will not be taking over. The AI will not be taking over the rest of the world. The whole thing is a hoax.”<\/p>\n

Republican congressman Chip Roy said the president was right to doubt the industry’s reasons for requesting government intervention.<\/p>\n

“When he calls it a hoax, he’s saying, ‘Wait is this real? What are y’all’s motives?”’ Roy told reporters at the Pro-Human Assembly.<\/p>\n

“Now, is the issue of whether we can lose control of AI, is that in any way a hoax? No, of course not.<\/p>\n

“We’ve all been wondering where this could go, and that’s what I think we need to try to address.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Political enemies have united in Washington to push for AI regulation, but US President Donald Trump continues to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":601785,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[365,363,364,111,139,69,145],"class_list":["post-601784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=601784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601784\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/601785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=601784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=601784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=601784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}