With OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Sen. Bernie Sanders set to meet on the Hill Wednesday to discuss the senator’s plan to take half the equity of AI frontier labs to fund a US sovereign wealth fund, OpenAI has been preparing its own policy framework, according to people familiar with the matter.
Altman is also meeting with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Speaker Mike Johnson, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and others.
The news comes as OpenAI is pushing a state-level regulation strategy in which key states would pass uniform legislation, creating a de facto national regulatory framework to fill the federal vacuum.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order earlier this week asking AI companies to give 30 days’ notice of new, powerful models coming out.
While a big equity grab seems unlikely, it’s increasingly plausible that AI will soon have some guardrails in place.
Whether those guardrails change much is another question. Anthropic’s Mythos AI model, which has advanced cybersecurity capabilities, sent shockwaves through the industry and Capitol Hill.
Anthropic said it was deliberately delaying the release of Mythos to give stakeholders time to adjust and adapt to its capabilities. Policymakers are also worried about the labs approaching “recursive self-improvement,” where models are capable of improving themselves.
Laws requiring companies like Anthropic to provide more time could make an impact. But it’s unclear whether lawmakers would be able to mitigate threats like a runaway AI model that threatens all humanity — another concern that Sanders has flagged.
Altman is also planning to attend the G7 this month, an OpenAI spokesperson told Semafor.
Nicholas Wu and Eleanor Mueller contributed to this report.