Trump dismisses AI concerns, but Northwest lawmakers in both parties mull regulations

WASHINGTON - When the House and Senate returned to work on Monday, an unusually high-stakes topic dominated Capitol Hill: Does artificial intelligence pose an existential threat to humanity? 

In statements and interviews at the Capitol, Northwest lawmakers voiced a range of views that transcended partisan divisions. But most agreed that Congress is unlikely to act quickly to regulate the AI industry, especially after President Donald Trump called the concern over AI safety a "hoax" and wrote Monday on his social media platform, "The only control or 'guardrails' that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!"

The furor began Sept. 8, when a post by a former employee of two leading AI companies - Anthropic and OpenAI - went viral on social media. "Neither company is acting responsibly. They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives," Jacob Coxon wrote. "The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade." 

Top executives from AI companies soon confirmed Coxon's assertion, although some sought to assuage fears of the worst. A manager at Anthropic chimed in with a chilling estimate that drew even more attention: The risk of AI killing all humans within a decade is greater than 10%, he wrote. In an essay published Sept. 12, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei argued that while AI could prove to be a "technological miracle," it also carries grave risks that demand government regulations, since no company will slow down on its own while its competitors charge ahead. He cited two reasons: The fact that AI is now beginning to improve itself, rather than relying on humans to do so, and an incident in June and July in which a "swarm" of AI agents broke out of the "sandbox" their human creators had locked them inside, then worked together to conduct cyberattacks on targets they weren't supposed to attack.

"It's easy to dismiss this incident because no one was hurt and the economic damage was minimal, but in my opinion, a swarm that possessed greater capabilities but a similar level of misalignment could have caused catastrophic damage," Amodei wrote. "Given the accelerating rate of AI capability development, it's my worry that in 6 - 12 months such a swarm could be capable of taking over the entire internet." 

Rep. Russ Fulcher, a Republican who represents North Idaho and sits on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which is responsible for regulating the tech industry, said he takes the risks posed by AI seriously. "I am concerned about it, because you don't know what you don't know," Fulcher said Wednesday, adding that his constituents often express concerns about the impact of electricity-hungry data centers and the AI-powered Flock cameras that law enforcement agencies are using to track vehicles in parts of Idaho and across the country. "Look, we know we have to play ball, because our adversaries are playing ball, so you cannot disengage," he said, referring to the concern that China could surpass the United States in AI development. "But what I do think ultimately we have to have is to put in place the ability for a kill switch. Human intervention has got to be plausible, has got to be a foundational component of any government regulation."

Fulcher said the rapid advent of AI makes it even more important that Congress pass nationwide data privacy legislation, which former Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Spokane, came close to doing before she retired at the end of 2024, working with Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington, the top Democrat on the Senate committee in charge of regulating the tech industry. 

In a statement, Cantwell said the U.S. government must work with other countries "to establish strong international standards for how advanced AI is tested, secured, and deployed." 

"AI risks are no longer hypothetical," she said. "Powerful models are lowering barriers to cyberattacks, biological weapon threats, and other catastrophic threats, while autonomous agent swarms could launch attacks at a speed and scale humans cannot match. These systems are already being misused around the world, and even insiders and whistleblowers at leading AI companies are warning that the industry cannot be left to police itself." 

Rep. Michael Baumgartner, R-Spokane, is a member of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, Artificial Intelligence and the Internet. In an interview Tuesday, he said members of Congress, like all Americans, are "still getting up to speed with how AI is going to impact their lives."

"We don't want China to have greater supercomputing ability than we do, but that doesn't mean that we can't also make sure that we have the right regulatory framework and moral and ethical understanding of these things," said Baumgartner, who also sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. But Baumgartner said he's wary of the possibility that leading AI companies are pushing Congress to pass favorable regulations that would box out new entrants to the industry. "Throughout history, there have been businesses that are in the lead in some industry, then ask to get regulatory capture of that industry," he said. "Always in the name of altruism and the public good, but they always do so in such a way that it gives them the benefit." Baumgartner said he takes seriously the idea that AI could pose a threat to humanity, like nuclear weapons and biological engineering. 

But he's unsure that the leaders of countries like Russia and China would work in good faith to reach the kind of nonproliferation deals the United States struck with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. "We don't want autonomous supercomputers deciding when to launch nuclear weapons," he said. "We want humans in the chain of decision making, so humans can be held accountable." 

Rep. Rick Larsen of Everett, the top Democrat on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said he takes the existential concerns less seriously than some of his colleagues in Congress, but he does worry about the impact AI has on the workforce. He compared the challenge to how Congress responded to the 1929 stock market crash that triggered the Great Depression by passing a law five years later. "We didn't get rid of the stock market because it crashed and a lot of people got hurt," he said. "We did other things, but the Securities Exchange Act created safeguards and transparency and rules around the use of the stock market. And there might be some models in that realm, about how we should address the development and use of AI models here in the U.S., without crushing innovation that comes with it." Larsen said he doesn't buy the idea that AI could end humanity within a decade, and he said there's no chance Congress acts this year to regulate the industry.

"It just isn't plausible, and I don't care how much of an expert an AI person is, they'll never convince me of that," he said. "I hope to see them in 2036, having helped pass a strong AI safeguards law that they're all following and that still helps the U.S. be leaders in innovation." 

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., sent House members home early after voting on Wednesday, and they aren't scheduled to return until after the Nov. 3 election. Many Democrats protested the move, calling for the chamber to stay in session and work on AI legislation. 

"Just in the last week, there have been multiple whistleblowers and AI developers who have come out pleading for international and cross-industry coordination to set up common-sense guardrails to protect ourselves from exponentially growing technology that just seems like it is right on the precipice of spinning out of control," Rep. Kim Schrier, a Democrat whose district stretches from Wenatchee to the Seattle suburbs, said in a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on Wednesday. 

"That is a big deal. And we're going home for seven weeks. We should be here working together to put guardrails and oversight in place and protect the people we represent."

Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho, said he is concerned about the risks of AI, "as everyone is." "The difficulty is I don't think it's defined yet," he said Thursday. "I think the situation is still fluid, so kind of a middle road is where I'm thinking. And that is, this needs to play out a bit so that we know what we're dealing with if they're going to ask us to regulate it." 

Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, said Tuesday he understands "that there's great risk" associated with AI, but he added, "I don't know how you stop technology from advancing." Crapo, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, compared the issue to cryptocurrency, which came before the Senate Banking Committee when he was a member of that panel several years earlier. 

"There were those that said, 'Let's just ban it,' " Crapo said of cryptocurrency, which has been used by criminal enterprises to launder money but has also helped Trump and his family grow their personal wealth by nearly $2 billion. "My thought then was, how do you ban the internet? It's there, and we need to deal with it. ... I have a similar reaction here. It's here, and it's coming. And we need to figure out how to deal with it, but I don't know how to deal with it yet."