Politicians have long joked that if you go far enough to either extreme, left or right, you end up somewhere pretty similar. Voters may see some version of that play out before November's midterms. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders shared a stage with Steve Bannon this week at an event calling for limits on artificial intelligence.
Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson is using his platform to back Democratic hopeful Abdul El-Sayed over Republican Mike Rogers in Michigan's Senate race. The war with Iran pushed Carlson further still, alongside commentator Candace Owens and former Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, toward positions on Israel and foreign wars long associated with the progressive left. The partisan divide hasn't disappeared — the two sides remain far apart on most fundamentals.
But months into President Donald Trump's second term, an unlikely bond has formed between the political extremes. Sanders and Bannon spoke back-to-back Tuesday at the Pro-Human Assembly, an all-day gathering organized by the Future of Life Institute, a nonprofit pushing to keep humans in control of advanced AI, in a packed Washington ballroom. Speaking to nearly 300 people, Sanders said he'll introduce legislation next week with Texas Representative Greg Casar, a Democrat, to permanently ban development of artificial superintelligence — a hypothetical form of AI that would outperform humans at nearly every cognitive task.
"Like nuclear weapons, artificial superintelligence is a threat to humanity, and it must be treated as such," Sanders said. He saved his sharpest words for Washington itself: "Congress, under both Democratic and Republican control, has been asleep at the wheel, and we now have a president whose ignorance regarding this issue is truly embarrassing." Bannon took the stage right after and opened with a nod to the senator: "I think Senator Sanders did a very good job of summarizing the risk." He then accused AI executives of exploiting their own calls for a slowdown to lock in market dominance. "All they're trying to do is to use a crisis and turn it to their advantage by creating a moat, a cartel," he said.
But we aren't gonna give these guys carte blanche. Their arrogance is overwhelming." Their solutions diverged fast. Sanders hopes Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping will negotiate a treaty pausing advanced AI development when they meet at the White House next week.
Bannon wants curbs on any exchange of chips, technology or knowledge with China: "Take all Chinese nationals out of the labs and back to mainland China." The speaker list ran well beyond the two men — Republicans Marsha Blackburn and Chip Roy, Democrats Greg Casar and Lori Trahan, AFT President Randi Weingarten, San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, actors Ashley Judd and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and parents of children who died by suicide after talking to AI chatbots. The event landed amid rising alarm over the technology itself. Jacob Coxon, a former Anthropic researcher, resigned last week and wrote on X that researchers at the leading labs believe AI could kill all humans but keep pushing forward anyway.
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