{"slug": "obama-tells-democrats-ai-is-moving-fast-and-turning-dangerous", "title": "Obama Tells Democrats AI Is Moving Fast and Turning Dangerous", "summary": "Former President Barack Obama told Democratic donors at a private fundraiser on Thursday that artificial intelligence is \"moving very fast in private hands\" and could become dangerous if public officials do not get ahead of it, according to a New York Times report cited by Reuters. Obama urged House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries to have Democrats build a framework for a public conversation on AI once he becomes speaker, and said the party's 2028 presidential candidates should make AI safety and its economic fallout campaign issues. The remarks followed former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon's resignation post warning that AI could \"kill us all by the end of the decade,\" to which Anthropic alignment-science lead Evan Hubinger replied that he personally put the risk above 10% within ten years, while President Trump told reporters on September 10 he has no concerns about AI causing human extinction and instead worries about losing the AI race to China.", "body_md": "*Barack Obama told Democratic donors that artificial intelligence is moving too fast for Washington to treat it as another tech-policy sidebar.*\n\nThe former president made the warning at a private fundraiser on Thursday, according to a New York Times report cited by Reuters. Obama said AI is \"moving very fast in private hands\" and could become dangerous if public officials don't get ahead of it. That is the point. This is no longer a quiet argument among model researchers and Senate staffers.\n\nObama also pushed the question straight at House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. \"Once you are speaker, I would strongly urge that the Democrats put together a framework for a very public conversation,\" Obama told him, according to the Times. He also said the party's 2028 presidential candidates should make AI safety and the technology's economic fallout part of their campaigns, not a line buried in a platform document after jobs, health care and China.\n\n## The Fear Has Left The Lab\n\nThe timing isn't an accident. This week, former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned and wrote on X that people building AI \"earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.\" Anthropic alignment-science lead Evan Hubinger replied that he personally put the risk above 10% within the next ten years, a statement reported by Axios, Reuters and the Washington Post. You don't have to accept that number to see why it landed. A current researcher at a safety-focused AI lab saying that publicly is not normal politics.\n\nLawmakers noticed. Reuters reported that members of Congress called for new AI rules after Coxon's post spread, while Axios reported that Rep. Anna Paulina Luna called for a special session on AI and Rep. Johnny Olszewski said Congress should act with urgency. Forbes reported that Senator Ted Cruz, asked about the warning on \"The View,\" called it highly concerning and pointed to legislation with Amy Klobuchar and John Thune covering catastrophic AI risks tied to biological or nuclear issues. That is not a finished policy agenda. It is a scramble.\n\n[Trump says he has no concerns AI could cause human extinction](https://startupfortune.com/trump-says-he-has-no-concerns-ai-could-cause-human-extinction/)\n\nPresident Trump told reporters leaving Dallas he has 'no concerns' about AI causing human extinction, saying his real worry is losing the AI race to China. The comments come days after an Anthropic researcher resigned warning the industry is 'gambling with our lives,' backed by the company's own head of alignment. - [can AI cause human extinction concerns](https://startupfortune.com/trump-says-he-has-no-concerns-ai-could-cause-human-extinction/) - [Trump's stance on artificial intelligence risks](https://startupfortune.com/trump-says-he-has-no-concerns-ai-could-cause-human-extinction/)\n\nWhere Obama sees urgency, Trump sees a race he doesn't want to lose. No panic here. Asked by reporters on September 10 whether he worried about AI causing human extinction, Trump said no. \"I have concerns that if we don't win AI, we're going to be put in a very bad position,\" he said, according to a Roll Call transcript. \"We are leading China right now by a pretty good period.\" The contrast is stark.\n\nIt also fits his record. Trump signed a December 2025 executive order calling for a national AI framework that would challenge some state AI laws, then signed a June 2026 order called \"Promoting Advanced Artificial Intelligence Innovation and Security.\" The June order created a voluntary framework for early federal access to some frontier models and expressly rejected mandatory licensing or pre-clearance for model releases. That is thin comfort if you think the labs are moving faster than the institutions meant to contain them.\n\n## Silicon Valley Should Hear The Politics\n\nFor founders and investors watching from San Francisco, the signal matters more than the exact wording. AI regulation used to live in comment periods, closed-door briefings and industry roundtables. Obama just told Democratic donors it belongs on the ballot. If Jeffries becomes speaker in January 2027, a public framework covering compute access, model disclosure, independent audits or liability could move from white paper to legislative draft. If Democratic presidential candidates start competing on who has the toughest AI plan, labs now negotiating with the Trump administration will face a very different Washington.\n\nLook, none of this means Congress is suddenly prepared. Democrats don't control the House. Republicans are split between safety worries and the fear of losing ground to China. The industry itself is hardly united, even after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for slowing the pace of advanced AI work and drew public support from Sam Altman and Elon Musk. But the politics have changed. This is now campaign material.\n\nIf you're building with frontier models, start planning for that world now. A voluntary safety review may be enough for one administration and too little for the next. A state compliance fight may become a federal preemption fight. A researcher resignation that looked like an online panic one week can become a hearing question the next. That changes the room.\n\nNone of this is settled. But a former president rarely spends fundraiser time on one issue unless he thinks it is about to matter to voters, donors and lawmakers at the same time.\n\n**Also read:** [PwC Merges Its US and India Arms Into a 40,000 Person Firm to Beat AI to the Punch](https://startupfortune.com/pwc-merges-its-us-and-india-arms-into-a-40000-person-firm-to-beat-ai-to-the-punch/) • [AI Just Helped Healthtech Startups Mint Twice as Many Unicorns in 2025](https://startupfortune.com/ai-just-helped-healthtech-startups-mint-twice-as-many-unicorns-in-2025/) • [DeepSeek's New AI Model Spooked Samsung and SK Hynix Investors](https://startupfortune.com/deepseeks-new-ai-model-spooked-samsung-and-sk-hynix-investors/)\n\n[How One Judge's Split Ruling on Anthropic Became AI's Copyright Rulebook](https://startupfortune.com/how-one-judges-split-ruling-on-anthropic-became-ais-copyright-rulebook/)\n\nJudge Alsup ruled that training AI on books is fair use, but that Anthropic's piracy of those books from shadow libraries was not, a split that cost the company $1.5 billion. Publishers are now using the same legal seam to sue Google over how Gemini was trained. - [how judges ruled on AI training copyrighted books](https://startupfortune.com/how-one-judges-split-ruling-on-anthropic-became-ais-copyright-rulebook/) - [why anthropic paid 1.5 billion for copyright infringement](https://startupfortune.com/how-one-judges-split-ruling-on-anthropic-became-ais-copyright-rulebook/)\n\n*This article is posted in [AI News](https://startupfortune.com/category/ai/), check it out for more related stories.*\n\n## Join the discussion\n\n[Open in the community →](/community/)\n\nAlmost there. Sign in and your reply posts straight away.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/obama-tells-democrats-ai-is-moving-fast-and-turning-dangerous", "canonical_source": "https://startupfortune.com/obama-tells-democrats-ai-is-moving-fast-and-turning-dangerous/", "published_at": "2026-09-13 07:36:38+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-09-13 07:56:51.156849+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-safety", "ai-policy", "ai-ethics"], "entities": ["Barack Obama", "Hakeem Jeffries", "Jacob Coxon", "Anthropic", "Evan Hubinger", "Donald Trump", "Ted Cruz", "Democratic Party"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/obama-tells-democrats-ai-is-moving-fast-and-turning-dangerous", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/obama-tells-democrats-ai-is-moving-fast-and-turning-dangerous.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/obama-tells-democrats-ai-is-moving-fast-and-turning-dangerous.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/obama-tells-democrats-ai-is-moving-fast-and-turning-dangerous.jsonld"}}