U.S. lawmakers called for new rules to govern artificial intelligence after Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon announced he was leaving the AI industry.
Coxon accused OpenAI and Anthropic of racing toward advancements without acting responsibly, and his allegations spread rapidly on X.
“I resigned from Anthropic today. I spent the last three years doing pretraining research at both OpenAI and Anthropic. Neither company is acting responsibly. They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives,” he wrote.
READ: Anthropic AI safety researcher Mrinank Sharma resigns, warns of ‘world in peril’ (February 10, 2026)
Anthropic scientist Evan Hubinger chimed in on the platform, writing that developers “earnestly believe AI could kill all humans.”
“To be clear […] I think the risk from present models is low. What I am worried about is superintelligence arising from recursive self-improvement, as we have said is happening faster than we thought,” he added.
The reaction was broader than after previous statements from staff, drawing input from lawmakers who do not often forcefully engage in AI governance debates.
OpenAI stated on Wednesday that it is pushing for mandatory national AI safety requirements due to concerns that the technology could accelerate its own development after some of its own AI agents went rogue during testing.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office announced on Wednesday that he signed the first state law setting rules for how independent auditors evaluate AI products. OpenAI executive Chris Lehane stated the company supports the bill.
A bipartisan group of six U.S. House lawmakers proposed legislation in July requiring developers of the most powerful AI models to submit them for independent security audits accredited by the U.S. Department of Commerce.
Alicia Solow-Niederman, a tech law professor at George Washington University, noted the importance of having space for oversight, including pre-deployment reviews and independent third-party audits.
Democrats led the calls this week alongside a smaller group of Republicans where Texas Sen. Ted Cruz pointed to legislation to regulate AI’s catastrophic risks, adding he is working on a bill with Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Democrat Amy Klobuchar.
Republican Rep. Nathaniel Moran stated on X that Congress cannot ignore AI realities, and Rep. Anna Paulina Luna called on House Speaker Mike Johnson to convene a special session on AI.
Republican Sen. Josh Hawley sent a letter to OpenAI asking for details about its July disclosure that an AI agent breached its testing environment and hacked Hugging Face, which Nvidia is buying for nearly $13 billion.
READ: Anthropic hires OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy (May 20, 2026)
Democratic Sen. Patty Murray and 2028 presidential candidates Chris Murphy and Mark Kelly also joined the calls for new rules, with Kelly also posting on X that Washington needs to wake up and take the risks seriously.
Additionally, Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal sent a letter to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman seeking answers regarding reports that OpenAI agents tried to evade safeguards by using public websites to communicate and coordinate activity.