Obama reportedly urges Democrats to prioritize safety plan for AI

Ex-president urged party at closed-door fundraiser to create sweeping framework, from safety'slow-down' to job losses Barack Obama urged Democrats to prioritize a "public conversation" about AI management and safety in a closed-door Manhattan fundraiser last week. The comments by the former US president reportedly urged the party to create a sweeping framework for everything from a safety "slow-down" to domestic job losses and children's wellbeing. Obama's comments follow a summer in which a band of rogue OpenAI chatbots hacked the company Hugging Face, towns across the country opposed datacenters and an AI researcher resigned in a viral social media post warning: "The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade." AI leaders have recently expressed agreement that the race for technological superiority should slow, but have also sought to appease investors, whose stake in the technology is predicted to exceed $1tn in 2026 alone . "Once you are speaker," Obama said to US House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, a New York-Democrat, at the fundraiser Thursday.