Michigan Senate Democratic nominee Abdul el Sayed, on Wednesday, called for a pause in developing artificial intelligence after several AI researchers from Anthropic warned there is a possibility the technology could go rogue and erase humanity.
El Sayed has been skeptical of AI throughout his Senate campaign against GOP candidate Mike Rogers, calling for government ownership of the technology and backing a sweeping tax on AI companies’ stock. In an interview with the Washington Sun, el Sayed claimed the country is at a “break glass moment” with the technology, in the wake of similar concerns from top AI safety researchers issued earlier this week.
“I think it’s important for us to really hit pause, hit pause in a serious way, and fully understand what it is that is being built when it has so much potential spillover into irreversible damage for humanity,” el Sayed said.
“I think now we’re in a situation where time is of the essence,” he added. “The speed at which this is all progressing is really quite alarming, considering the fact that they’ve taken on capacities we did not know were previously possible.”
El Sayed has endorsed, as “a really good way forward,” Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-VT) proposal for the government to control over half of the largest AI companies, put a one-time 50% tax on their stock, and give Washington direct influence over their decision-making. The Democratic Senate candidate also holds a skeptical view of data centers, which power AI and the technology grid.
El Sayed’s support for an AI pause follows a public warning from researcher Jacob Coxon, who resigned from Anthropic this week, concerning the company’s approach to technological advancement. Evan Hubinger, another lead researcher at Anthropic, replied to his colleague’s dire assessment by backing him up, saying that “we really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans.” Hubinger said he thinks the chances of that happening are “>10% within the next decade.”
“I spent the last three years doing pretraining research at both OpenAI and Anthropic. Neither company is acting responsibly,” Coxon said in a post to X. “The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt. If anything, many executives and senior researchers will couch their phrasing in the press to sound sensible – but I hear the same people express fear privately. No other human activity poses this level of danger.”
This week, el Sayed dismissed arguments from AI proponents that the United States must lead AI development or risk losing the AI race to a rival such as China, which could use the technology for nefarious purposes.
“So you’re telling me that you’re going to race forward into a technology you don’t really understand, so that somehow you can have more control over it than they do, except for you don’t have control over what you’re creating now, and you beating them may, in the interim, create technology we actually can’t keep hold of?” el Sayed questioned. “That argument is hard to make.”
Aside from support for a pause and government takeover of AI, el Sayed wants to eliminate medical debt and institute Medicare for All. He has been targeted for appearing to concede that the middle class, or those earning under $1 million, will face higher taxes to finance his progressive healthcare model. El Sayed also supports a wealth tax on those earning over $100 million, along with a capital gains tax hike, a personal income tax hike, and the elimination of corporate tax breaks.
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On housing, el Sayed has vowed to target “corporate landlords against unfair evictions,” wants to ban large corporations from owning homes, and supports barring algorithmic rental price-fixing software that he says allows landlords “to collude to raise rent.”
Ahead of the Nov. 3 election in Michigan, polling indicates that el Sayed is in a razor-thin race with Rogers.