Bernie Sanders urges Trump and Xi to negotiate AI development pause treaty

US Senator Bernie Sanders has called on President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping to negotiate a treaty to pause advanced artificial intelligence development. Sanders is advocating for a ban on artificial superintelligence—defined as an AI mind capable of operating independently beyond human control—to protect the future of humanity.

The senator’s remarks follow recent calls from prominent technology executives to slow the pace of AI advancement. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and xAI CEO Elon Musk have all expressed the need to ‘pace the frontier.’ Amodei specifically warned of ‘recursive self-improvement,’ where AI models build the next generation of AI, potentially outrunning human ability to control the systems.

Sanders argued that while the tech leaders' calls for caution are a start, they are insufficient, stating that when facing a potential catastrophe, one must ‘hit the brakes’ rather than simply easing off the accelerator. He urged the US and China to address these risks during their upcoming summit.