Obama calls for Dems to focus on AI

Obama calls for Dems to focus on AI - POLITICO

Skip to Main Content

* + Europe
+ Pro
+ AgencyIQ

Press Escape to close the menu.

WASHINGTON & POLITICS

WASHINGTON & POLITICS 6 items

* 1st item
Congress
* 2nd item
White House
* 3rd item
Supreme Court and Legal Issues
* 4th item
Magazine
* 5th item
2026 Elections
* 6th item
Latest on POLITICO

STATE POLITICS & POLICY

STATE POLITICS & POLICY 4 items

* 1st item
California
* 2nd item
Florida
* 3rd item
New Jersey
* 4th item
New York

GLOBAL POLITICS & POLICY

GLOBAL POLITICS & POLICY 6 items

* 1st item
Brussels
* 2nd item
Canada
* 3rd item
United Kingdom
* 4th item
France
* 5th item
Germany
* 6th item
Australia

POLICY NEWS

POLICY NEWS 11 items

* 1st item
Food and Agriculture
* 2nd item
Cybersecurity
* 3rd item
Defense
* 4th item
Education
* 5th item
Energy and Climate
* 6th item
Tax, Finance and the Economy
* 7th item
Health Care
* 8th item
Labor
* 9th item
Tech
* 10th item
Trade
* 11th item
Transportation

NEWSLETTERS

NEWSLETTERS 6 items

* 1st item
Playbook
* 2nd item
West Wing Playbook
* 3rd item
Inside Congress
* 4th item
POLITICO Forecast
* 5th item
POLITICO Magazine
* 6th item
All Newsletters

COLUMNISTS

COLUMNISTS 7 items

* 1st item
Alex Burns
* 2nd item
Victoria Guida
* 3rd item
John Harris
* 4th item
Debra Kahn
* 5th item
Jonathan Martin
* 6th item
Nahal Toosi
* 7th item
All Columnists

SERIES & MORE

SERIES & MORE 7 items

* 1st item
Inside Congress Live
* 2nd item
Breaking News Alerts
* 3rd item
Podcasts
* 4th item
Video
* 5th item
Matt Wuerker Cartoons
* 6th item
Cartoon Carousel
* 7th item
The POLITICO Poll

POLITICO Live

POLITICO Live 1 item

* 1st item
Events

Follow us

* X
* Instagram
* Facebook
* LinkedIn

* My Account
* Log In

Obama calls for Dems to focus on AI

Creating a robust AI agenda should be a top focus for Congress and presidential candidates, he said at a private fundraiser.

!Barack Obama speaks at microphone.

*Former President Barack Obama speaks during the dedication ceremony for the Obama Presidential Center, June 18, 2026, in Chicago.

|

Alex Brandon/AP*

By Adam Wren

09/13/2026 11:55 AM EDT

Add POLITICO on Google

Former President Barack Obama is urging Democrats — including 2028 presidential candidates and congressional leaders — to more aggressively focus on a comprehensive AI agenda, warning in a closed-door fundraiser that the technology is at an inflection point.

“This is something that is moving very fast in private hands, and if we don’t get on top of it, I think can be dangerous,” Obama said at the fundraiser Thursday, according to a partial transcript of his remarks provided by his office. “If we do get on top of it, I do think it’s beneficial.”

Speaking alongside House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries

at the New-York Historical Society in Manhattan, Obama said he is neither a “doomer” nor an “accelerationist.” His remarks come amid increasing alarm over the technology’s advance, with executives at two of the country’s leading AI labs joining Elon Musk in calling for slowing its development, following months and years of cries from within the industry for government to act.

Obama said AI development would be “one of my central agendas” if he were running for president, throwing down a gauntlet as the shadow 2028 Democratic primary debate responded to the AI leaders’ calls.

“I would have a very clear plan, and I would talk about this, and I would say, here’s our plan for safety, here’s our plan for making sure our kids are not corrupted by this,” Obama said, according to excerpts of his remarks shared with POLITICO by his office and first reported by The New York Times.

Among the top concerns, Obama said: “I would be thinking about the economic impacts in very concrete ways and understanding what does it mean if there’s going to be job displacement. Where is that going to hit? How are we going to respond? Are there going to be limits to the amount of displacement that can take place? What is that going to mean for our social safety net? If it turns out that you’ve got a lot more people who can’t find full-time work because they’ve been rendered redundant, how are we going to respond?”

He also called for Congress to take action, telling Jeffries that Democrats should “put together a framework for a very public conversation” centered on the biggest issues.

Obama’s remarks mark a larger shift for both himself and the Democratic Party writ large: He governed as a tech-friendly Democrat, who broke POTUS tech barriers by having a laptop and iPad while in office and whose 2011 town hall at Facebook headquarters was widely seen as typifying the administration’s friendliness with Silicon Valley.

The Obama era was also known for Washington’s failure to confront the growing monopolization of power in the tech industry, most famously in the Federal Trade Commission’s 2013 decision not to file an antitrust lawsuit against Google. (The first Trump Justice Department later filed such a suit seven years later.)

Already on Sunday, at least two potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidates addressed the issue of slowing the pace of cutting-edge AI development, or otherwise keeping their products from launching pandemics or cyberattacks.

Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Democrats need to “address it head on.”

“There needs to be safeguards. There need to be rules. There need to be limits. There needs to be a kill switch on rogue AI,” Buttigieg said, criticizing congressional Republicans and the White House for not moving quicker to rein in AI development.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who has gone from courting AI investment to pumping the brakes on data center development, posted to X Sunday that it’s “long past time for our federal government to step up, take this seriously, and put up some guardrails — both here at home and on the global stage.”

The calls for “some guardrails” are still much milder than the proposals coming from the far left of the Democratic caucus, including the proposal by Sen. Bernie Sanders

(I-Vt.) and Rep. Greg Casar

(D-Texas) to pause the development of advanced AI models and permanently ban “artificial superintelligence.” And Obama’s remarks underscore the leadership vacuum in a Democratic Party that remains in the wilderness after brutal 2024 losses and continues to struggle to unify around a policy agenda.

In a portion of his remarks, Obama acknowledged that challenge, saying that “part of the job for us is to give people a reason to believe again in the idea of the democratic project, the American project, the economy that works for everyone, opportunity for every kid, to reassure people that if we work together, we can deliver those things. That’s hard to do without somebody in the White House to lead the charge, but I do think that people are ready for that message.”

President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has dismissed any worries about AI posing an existential threat, telling reporters last week that he’s mainly worried about beating China to dominate the technology.

Obama compared AI to other “dangerous technologies like nuclear power,” but added that it did not have the same “natural” and “physical constraints” on it that is not “under state control.”

In Congress, House and Senate lawmakers have sought to advance legislation to slow down or impose limits on AI development, so far without success. One key Senate proposal, led by Sen. Amy Klobuchar

(D-Minn.) and Senate Majority Leader John Thune

, faces an uncertain future because of differences over how to impose a legal duty on Silicon Valley companies that would hold them liable for harms their models cause. Another contentious issue is whether the legislation should preempt state from imposing their own AI laws.

House Speaker Mike Johnson

said Sunday morning he would support talks with tech leaders on AI but insisted that developers — not Congress — are primarily responsible for ensuring