Bernie Sanders, Steve Bannon unite to call for AI restrictions

If you had “Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon on the same stage” on your 2026 bingo card, congratulations. The Vermont senator and the former Trump strategist appeared together at the Future of Life Institute’s Pro-Human Assembly in Washington, D.C., on September 15, both calling for sharp restrictions on AI development. What happened at the assembly The Pro-Human Assembly brought together a bipartisan roster of lawmakers, activists, and public figures. Attendees included labor leader Randi Weingarten and actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt, alongside elected officials from both parties. Sanders delivered what amounted to a warning shot at the AI industry. He cautioned that AI could eliminate tens of millions of jobs and pushed for binding regulations on development, not the voluntary commitments that tech companies have offered so far. His legislative agenda includes pausing advanced AI development and permanently banning superintelligence, a category of AI system that would exceed human-level cognitive abilities across all domains. Bannon, for his part, called AI “the defining issue of our time.” His framing leaned harder into the anti-establishment register, taking aim at what he described...