Former President Barack Obama urged Democrats to prioritize developing a plan around artificial intelligence, saying that’s what he would be doing if he were running for president in 2028.
In remarks at a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee fundraiser Thursday, Obama said that while he was neither an “accelerationist” nor a “doomer,” the AI bell is not one that could be unrung, and that Democrats ought to flesh out an agenda on the topic.
“If I were running for president next year, this would be one of my central agendas, and I would have a very clear plan, and I would talk about this, and I would say, ‘Here’s our plan for safety, here’s our plan for making sure our kids are not corrupted by this.’ … I would be thinking about the economic impacts in very concrete ways and understanding what does it mean if there’s going to be job displacement,” Obama said in his remarks, provided to NBC News by the former president’s office.
Obama made the comments in a discussion with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y. Obama told Jeffries to convene a “public conversation.”
“Once you are speaker, I would strongly urge that the Democrats put together a framework for a very public conversation, and you can break it out into three or four or five issues and lay the foundation for a broad public conversation,” Obama said.
The former president called the technology potentially dangerous, while saying if handled properly, in time it could be beneficial.
“This is something that is moving very fast in private hands, and if we don’t get on top of it, I think can be dangerous. If we do get on top of it, I do think it’s beneficial,” Obama said, adding that AI could help accelerate the curing of diseases and clean energy. “We don’t want to shut off those opportunities, but we have to understand that this is a tool.”
A source familiar with Obama’s thinking said the former president saw Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s essay this weekend calling for an AI slowdown, and the industry leaders’ comments in agreement, as an “encouraging development.”
Amodei wrote over the weekend that the speed at which AI was developing was outpacing safety guardrails, prompting OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Elon Musk to speak out in agreement. Their statements came as researchers last week left AI companies citing safety concerns, with Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon saying he was leaving the company over concerns that AI could cause “human extinction” without international cooperation.
The wave of warnings prompted Democrats to call on House Speaker Mike Johnson to convene an emergency session on AI. Johnson said Sunday with NBC News’ “Meet the Press” that regulating the technology was important, but Congress could not “rush in,” citing industry leaders who he said did not yet know how to slow down AI’s pace.
Johnson said he would “summon the platform providers all to one big meeting and work this out together in the same room.”
President Donald Trump told reporters in Ireland on Sunday that “whoever wins AI wins,” dismissing safety concerns while suggesting his priority for the U.S. was for the country to beat China in the technology’s development.
