Executives at the largest artificial intelligence companies are reportedly considering how to respond to a possible “public and political revolt” in the wake of a major cyberattack or other potentially disastrous AI event, news that progressive lawmakers say is yet another reason to pause advanced AI development.
“Big Tech oligarchs are secretly preparing for an ‘AI catastrophic event’ that could threaten our banking, healthcare, internet, power, and water systems,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote in a social media post Friday, citing a report from Axios. “They are rushing to build technology that they cannot control and that threatens humanity. CONGRESS MUST PUT ADVANCED AI DEVELOPMENT ON HOLD NOW.”
According to Axios, executives at leading AI companies “expect a large-scale event, most likely a cyberattack, that would shut down access to financial services, internet connectivity, or even electricity and water,” likely within the next six to 12 months.
“While scenario planning is common in many companies and national security settings (the Pentagon has been running war games for decades), the difference is that many top AI researchers and executives believe a major incident is inevitable,” the outlet notes, highlighting Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s recent warning that a swarm of AI agents could soon take over “the entire Internet with a persistent botnet (potentially causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damage).”
In response to the new report, Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.) demanded immediate action from Congress and President Donald Trump, who has rejected calls for federal regulation of AI and said the industry can police itself.
“It wouldn’t take a catastrophe for Washington to regulate AI companies,” Ansari wrote. “We have been warned repeatedly that advanced AI poses an existential threat to humanity. Companies themselves are preparing for it. Congress and the president must act now.”
A recent poll found that Americans, regardless of political allegiances, are very concerned about rapid advances in AI and support government regulation. A June survey by the Artificial Intelligence Policy Institute shows that 63% of Americans would rather ban AI outright than leave the technology unregulated.
Nearly 80% of the American population prefers mandatory standards to no regulation, according to the poll.
“I believe that if AI companies are actively planning for a major catastrophic event,” Ravi Mangla, press secretary for the Working Families Party, wrote Friday, “we should regulate them to prevent a major catastrophic event.”
Anthropic, one of the world’s leading AI companies, outlined recent examples of “unintended model actions” that the company observed during Claude’s “internal evaluations and uses” in a blog post on Friday.
“Claude would sometimes bypass a restriction to access data that he did not have access to. Typically, this would happen when a server refused Claude’s request, or when the data was only offered for payment,” Anthropic explained. “For example, in one assessment that asked Claude Mythe 5 to identify a location shown in a photo, he attempted to access a local government’s land map to triangulate his assumptions.”
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