Obama warns AI in private hands could be dangerous and urges Democrats to act

Barack Obama told a closed Democratic fundraiser that rapid AI development in private hands could become dangerous. He urged House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, should he become speaker, to adopt a public AI framework, embed safety and economic-disruption policies in the party platform and the 2028 presidential campaign, and noted existing secret U.S. review rules for frontier models, industry pressure such as OpenAI’s call for mandatory safety standards, and a letter from over a thousand AI workers requesting governmental slowdown mechanisms.