Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon Share a Stage in Washington Today to Demand Congress Rein In AI. The Anthropic Researcher Who Quit Last Week Pulled Out of the Event at the Last Minute.

Sen. Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon will appear back-to-back on the same stage in Washington on Tuesday, a pairing of the American left's best-known democratic socialist and the MAGA movement's chief strategist that would have been unthinkable on almost any other issue. The issue is artificial intelligence, and both men want Congress to move faster to put humans in charge of it.

The all-day "Pro-Human Assembly" is organized by the Future of Life Institute, a nonprofit that in March published 33 principles for what it calls a pro-human movement. The principles hold that humans must remain in control of AI, that people should keep their agency and liberty, and that AI companies should be held accountable. The group's "Pro-Human AI Declaration" adds a call to prevent concentrations of power. Sanders and Bannon are scheduled to speak around 1 p.m.

"The Oligarchs are finally being forced to admit they've lied from the beginning about the dangers of acceleration with zero guardrails," Bannon told Axios ahead of the event, warning that unrestrained development puts the nation in jeopardy. He has previously called AI "the most dangerous technology in the history of mankind." Sanders, the independent from Vermont, has proposed a sovereign wealth fund so taxpayers share in AI profits and has called for banning the development of superintelligence.

The speaker list stretches well beyond the two headliners. It includes Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, Democratic Rep. Greg Casar of Texas, American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten, San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, actors Ashley Judd and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, religious leaders from several denominations, and child-safety advocates including parents of children who died by suicide after conversations with AI chatbots. "By centering our common humanity, we maintain a space grounded in trust and collaborative problem-solving to chart a pro-human future with AI," the organizers wrote at the end of the program.

One name that had been on the bill is gone. Jacob Coxon, the 27-year-old British researcher who resigned from Anthropic last Tuesday with a warning that the race among AI companies risked spiraling out of control, had been announced as a participant. He withdrew, telling Axios that his public profile had grown so quickly that appearing alongside prominent ideological figures could lead people to read his position as belonging to one political camp. A Future of Life Institute spokesperson confirmed he will not attend.

The assembly comes days after the industry itself broke ranks. Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei published an essay last week calling for frontier labs to coordinate a slowdown, and OpenAI's Sam Altman said companies "could lose control" of the technology. President Trump dismissed the warnings within hours. "We're leading China in AI, we're the most sophisticated country in the world, and frankly, I want to keep it that way because whoever wins AI, wins," he told reporters Sunday. "And we can put guardrails, we can do this and that. But I think you have a lot of negative forces that are bringing it up that shouldn't be bringing it up."

House Speaker Mike Johnson has taken a similar line, saying he supports some guardrails but that companies, not Congress, should police safety. "We cannot put a moratorium on this because China will overlap us, and that's the challenge," Johnson told CNN over the weekend. "If Congress just races in and does some sort of emergency session to try to regulate AI, we will lose the race to China, and that is a threat to every single American." Senate Majority Leader John Thune has called for a "light touch."

Still, the House is moving on one narrow piece of the problem. As early as Tuesday it is expected to vote on the Ratepayer Protection Act, a bill designed to shield households from electricity price spikes tied to data-center construction. It is a small measure next to what the assembly's speakers are asking for, but it is a sign that lawmakers in both parties have noticed the same voter anxiety that put Sanders and Bannon in the same room.