The Vermont senator's push for AI guardrails comes after his committee projected nearly 100 million US jobs at risk from automation over the next decade.
Sen. Bernie Sanders is gathering his Senate colleagues for a briefing on artificial intelligence, the latest move in his increasingly aggressive campaign to force Washington to reckon with a technology he believes is barreling forward without adequate oversight.
The case Sanders is building #
Sanders, the ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, has assembled a body of work over the past year that paints AI as an existential economic threat to working Americans. A late 2025 report from his committee estimated that AI and automation could eliminate nearly 100 million US jobs over the next decade.
The projected losses cut across industries in ways that are hard to ignore. According to the committee’s figures, 47% of truck drivers, 64% of accountants, and 89% of fast food workers could see their roles replaced by AI systems.
Sanders has referenced AI researcher Geoffrey Hinton, often called the “godfather of AI,” to bolster his argument that artificial intelligence may soon surpass human intelligence entirely.
In April 2026, Sanders hosted an unusual event on Capitol Hill that brought together US and Chinese AI scientists to discuss the risks posed by the technology.
Legislation and open letters #
In March 2026, he and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced the AI Data Center Moratorium Act, citing opposition from over 500 localities to the construction of new data centers.
On August 10, 2026, Sanders sent a public demand to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, calling for a in AI development. The letter cited recent incidents involving what Sanders described as rogue AI systems, cases where AI models behaved in ways their creators hadn’t anticipated or couldn’t control.
Sanders has also introduced the American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act, which proposes a public ownership stake in major AI companies. The concept borrows from sovereign wealth fund models used by countries like Norway, but applies it specifically to the AI sector.
Sanders has repeatedly named Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos as examples of technology billionaires wielding outsized influence over the development and deployment of AI systems, with minimal democratic accountability.
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