House Speaker Mike Johnson said Sunday that Congress needs to regulate artificial intelligence without stifling U.S. innovation, calling for a meeting of the leading AI companies as concerns grow that the technology is advancing faster than safety measures can keep up.
Johnson, R-La., said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Congress should move carefully on AI regulation and rejected calls to cancel an upcoming House recess to pass legislation before the November elections.
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“This is a very important issue and it’s not one that we can rush into,” Johnson said.
Johnson urges balance between regulation and innovation
Johnson said Congress needs to establish safeguards to prevent AI from advancing beyond human control while protecting the United States’ technological advantage over China.
“We have to put some guardrails, some safety measures in place to ensure that AI doesn’t run away,” Johnson said.
But he warned that overly restrictive legislation could threaten U.S. competitiveness and national security.
“We’ve got to make sure that we don’t lose our edge in the global competition on this with China because that would be a national security threat,” Johnson said.
Johnson said he has spoken with executives from major AI companies, including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Elon Musk. While they agree that safeguards are necessary, Johnson said the executives have different ideas about what regulation should look like.
Anthropic CEO warns AI safeguards are falling behind
Johnson’s comments came after Amodei warned that the rapid development of AI needs to slow down, saying companies need more time to ensure their safeguards and ability to control increasingly powerful systems keep pace with technological advances.
Amodei said Sunday on CBS’ “Sunday Morning” that he had underestimated how quickly AI development would accelerate.
“I don’t think I fully just appreciated what it would actually be like when the progress was as fast as it was,” Amodei said.
He stressed that his warning was not a call for panic or an immediate shutdown of AI development.
“It doesn’t mean we need to panic today. It doesn’t mean we need to shut it all down,” Amodei said. “It’s a warning sign that we need to slow down.”
Amodei made a similar case Saturday in an essay calling for AI companies to “pace the frontier,” arguing that continued advances could bring major benefits in medicine, economic growth and democratic societies while also creating risks involving loss of control, cyberattacks, bioterrorism and economic disruption.
Anthropic cites potential biological weapons risks
The warning comes as Anthropic has disclosed cases in which researchers used its Claude AI system for work with potential biological weapons applications.
The company said it could not determine whether the researchers intended harm and cautioned that the cases did not demonstrate that Claude was used to create a biological weapon.
In one case, Anthropic’s safety system blocked a request involving gain-of-function research on chikungunya, a mosquito-borne disease. The company said the research could contribute to vaccines or treatments but that similar experiments could potentially make a pathogen more dangerous.
Anthropic said it became more concerned after determining the research was intended for a military institute. Other cases involved avian influenza, orthopoxvirus research, venom peptides and toxins.
The company also reported cases involving surveillance, weapons-related activity and influence operations. Anthropic said it closed accounts connected to the activity, strengthened its detection systems and, in some cases, shared information with authorities or industry partners.
Johnson calls for meeting with AI industry leaders
Johnson said he wants to bring the major AI platform providers together for a meeting to discuss potential safeguards and regulation.
“I think the first step is to have a meeting of all the platform providers,” Johnson said.
He said he has discussed the idea with President Donald Trump and believes the meeting should happen quickly.
Johnson said the companies have a responsibility to make their products safe because they are competing with one another.
“So, they don’t themselves even have the answer as of today,” Johnson said.
AI safety debate intensifies
Amodei has proposed allowing independent third-party evaluators ongoing access to frontier AI companies so they can verify safety practices and report incidents. He said Anthropic would adopt the measure on its own and urged governments to require other leading AI companies to do the same.
The debate has also drawn support from other prominent technology leaders. Musk and Altman have expressed support for slowing the pace of frontier AI development.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said those calls for caution are a start but do not go far enough.
“When you are racing towards a cliff, you don’t just ease up on the gas pedal. You hit the brakes,” Sanders said, calling for a pause on advanced AI development and a ban on artificial superintelligence capable of operating independently beyond human control.
Earlier in the week, former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned after warning that leading AI companies could eventually develop systems they are unable to control. Coxon, who previously worked at both Anthropic and OpenAI, said he believed the companies were moving too quickly toward self-improving AI systems.
At the same time, critics argue that the focus on hypothetical future threats can distract from problems AI is already causing.
Johnson says Congress won’t rush legislation
Johnson stopped short of committing to canceling the House recess, saying lawmakers would return immediately if they had a clear legislative solution.
“Of course, we’d vote on that tomorrow if we had the solution,” Johnson said. “I’ll call everybody into session any day, but we have to make sure we’re doing it the right way.”
For Johnson, the challenge is finding a middle ground: establishing meaningful safety standards while preserving the United States’ ability to compete in AI.
“We’ve got to have meaningful regulation that does not smother American innovation,” Johnson said. “Now, the how to solve that equation, no one knows yet.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said in an ABC News interview that when the Democratic caucus meets on Tuesday, a “high priority will be action on artificial intelligence.”
“We certainly need to begin to act urgently to address the challenges that exist,” Jeffries said on “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.” “We should take decisive action now so that we can slow down, as the CEOs have recently acknowledged, slow down the pace of development in order to protect the American people and ensure that AI is proceeding safely.”
