AI panic sparks rare bipartisan moment on Capitol Hill

Lawmakers who want to regulate AI are doing something unusual as Congress barrels towards a lengthy recess with no tangible solution in sight: They're working across the aisle.

Why it matters: Bipartisanship is increasingly elusive on Capitol Hill of late, but it remains a crucial first step for action in a Senate that requires 60 votes to pass most legislation.

The latest example: Sens.

Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) are pressing congressional leadership for a vote on their bill to establish a federal program to assess and monitor AI systems.

"Recent incidents of rogue AI agent swarms hacking into public websites and systems have removed lingering doubts concerning the ability of these agents to wreak havoc on our cyber infrastructure," the pair wrote in a letter first obtained by Axios.

"Congress cannot delay legislating to address frontier AI risks much longer.

Industry-led evaluations are not enough." State of play: Several new bipartisan efforts to regulate AI have cropped up in the week since several current and former employees at Anthropic and OpenAI went public with concerns about the existential risks posed by their own products.

Reps.

Russell Fry (R-S.C.) and Suhas Subramanyam (D-Va.) are founding a caucus focused on AI small businesses, called the Innovators Caucus, as Axios first reported Monday.

Among the group's stated goals is starting work on a federal framework to regulate AI, as well as bringing small businesses to the AI policymaking table.

The doomsday warnings have also breathed new life into existing bipartisan proposals to mitigate the dangers of AI.

Rep.

Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) has been publicly hawking his bill with Rep.

Nathaniel Moran (R-Texas) to require AI companies to include a human-activated "kill switch" in their systems.