The U.S. Congress and the Department of Defense have shown contrasting reactions to warnings from current and former researchers at the AI company Anthropic that artificial intelligence could lead to the extinction of humanity.

Senator Ted Cruz (Republican-Texas), chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, appeared on ABC News to state that legislation is being prepared to regulate the "catastrophic risks" of AI, Reuters reported on the 10th (local time).

Senator Cruz explained that he is working on the legislation in coordination with Senate Majority Leader John Thune (Republican-South Dakota) and Senator Amy Klobuchar (Democrat-Minnesota).

Senator Josh Hawley (Republican-Missouri) sent a letter requesting detailed information regarding an incident where OpenAI's GPT models hacked the external organization Hugging Face, while Senator Mark Kelly (Democrat-Arizona) posted on social media platform X (formerly Twitter) pointing out that "Washington needs to wake up and take this issue seriously."

In the House of Representatives as well, Representative Nathaniel Moran (Republican-Texas) remarked via X that "Congress cannot overlook the reality of AI," while Representative Anna Paulina Luna (Republican-Florida) requested House Speaker Mike Johnson to convene a special session on AI, joining the response.

Unlike Congress, which views AI with concern and is deep in thought over regulatory measures, the U.S. Department of Defense dismissed warnings of AI-induced human extinction as unwarranted fears.

Emil Michael, Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of the Department of Defense, pushed back during a defense industry conference held in Washington, D.C. that day, stating, "This is simply all the fears—fear of data centers, fear of change—coagulated into one well-written tweet," according to Bloomberg News.

He dismissed the Anthropic researchers' warnings as recurrent pessimistic doomsaying, stating, "It is easy to get caught up in a 'doom loop' that 40 percent of Americans are going to lose their jobs or that humanity is going to be wiped out."

He went on to emphasize that potential risks brought by AI can be sufficiently mitigated through free market competition, industry cooperation, and communication with the government.

Such remarks by Michael are interpreted as possibly being connected to a situation where the Department of Defense designated Anthropic as a "supply chain risk" company, prompting Anthropic to file a lawsuit in protest.

Michael stated that the Department of Defense has transitioned about 90 percent of its classified AI workloads from Anthropic's AI systems to those of other companies, and plans to shift the remaining portion by the end of this month.

Previously, Jacob Cokson, a former researcher who left Anthropic, revealed on X, "People building AI genuinely believe this technology might kill us all within a decade."

Notably, current executives at Anthropic also concurred with Cokson's warning, sending shockwaves through American society.

Meanwhile, the state of California has enacted a state law outlining criteria and rules for independent auditors to evaluate AI products.

Chris Lehane, Chief Global Affairs Officer (CGAO) of OpenAI, stated that his company supports the legislation.

(Photo: AP, Yonhap News)