WASHINGTON: US Senator Bernie Sanders on Tuesday called on US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping to sign a treaty to pause development of advanced AI systems in a speech in Washington.

Recent surveys have found majorities of Americans worry the technology could be used to eliminate jobs, raise costs for families or otherwise cause social harm.

Residents in several states have also challenged proposals for new data centers, a critical component of the AI boom. 77pc of Americans worry AI-driven data centers will raise electricity costs, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll published in June.

Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon captured public attention last week when he said he resigned from the company, in part because the “people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”

Senators debate bill to block states from enforcing their own laws governing certain risks posed by AI models

Bannon, a longtime ally of US President Donald Trump, has criticised Trumps approach to overseeing AI, placing the blame for the president’s unwillingness to regulate the technology squarely on tech companies.

On his Monday podcast, Bannon said Congress should not pass laws that prohibit states from enforcing their own rules for the technology.

The American people are not going to be supplicants to these tech oligarchs, Bannon said. Reuters previously reported that US senators are debating a bill that would block states from enforcing their own laws governing certain risks posed by AI models. Previously, efforts to restrict state AI laws failed in the US Senate.

Trump on Monday downplayed concerns expressed by industry leaders over the weekend about the misuse of artificial intelligence harming people, saying the US already has guardrails in place for the powerful technology.

Sanders and Bannon will be joined by AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler and Walter Kim, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, who are also slated to give speeches, according to event organisers. The AFL-CIO is the largest federation of labor unions in the US.

Sanders, along with House progressive Rep. Greg Casar, has called for the US to pass legislation halting development of AI tools that are capable of overthrowing or undermining the US government, until the government creates a new agency to police the technology. Casar and Sanders have not released specifics.

Published in Dawn, September 16th, 2026