Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon to share a stage to promote curbs on AI

Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks at Mumford High School on May 3 in Detroit. Steve Bannon speaks during the Semafor World Economy Summit 2025 at Conrad Washington on April 23, 2025, in Washington, D.C. Sanders credit: Sarah Rice/Getty Images and Bannon credit: Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images hide caption

The poles of American politics are coming together over artificial intelligence. Left-wing socialist Bernie Sanders and right-wing strategist Steve Bannon have joined forces to push for more human control over the rapidly-evolving technology.

Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont, and Bannon, a former Trump White House adviser, will both appear at the "Pro-Human Assembly" in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, alongside a diverse set of speakers, to convince Congress to work faster to curb the impact of AI.

The rare pairing of a progressive leader and a MAGA voice is a sign of how AI is upending political alliances.

The assembly – an all-day event – is organized by the Future of Life Institute , a nonprofit advocacy group that issued 33 principles in March to guide their pro-human movement . Those principles include that humans must remain in charge of AI, people should retain agency and liberty and AI companies should be held accountable.

The event comes at a time when concerns over the spread of data centers, the growing influence of AI and warnings from AI insiders caused leaders at Anthropic and OpenAI to call for a slow down in AI development to keep the technology under human control. At the same time, lawmakers have been urging House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., to pass AI safeguards.

Johnson has said he supports some guardrails for AI, but it's the companies, not Congress, that should be responsible for policing 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."