Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., called for stronger federal oversight of artificial intelligence (AI) on Oct. 8, arguing that AI companies cannot be relied upon to police themselves as increasingly powerful models are developed.
Speaking at a Punchbowl News technology summit, Schiff said federal officials should establish safety protocols, monitoring systems, and other safeguards for advanced AI models, rather than relying on voluntary commitments from the companies developing them.
“We need to put in place protocols and monitors, to make sure that as these frontier models are developing, they’re developing safely,” Schiff said. “I certainly don’t believe the self-policing moral authority argument is sufficient.”
Schiff’s comments come as Congress continues to weigh AI regulation without agreement on what a comprehensive federal framework should include. President Donald Trump has repeatedly rejected calls for additional AI regulation, favoring voluntary industry commitments.
The Trump administration backed that approach through an agreement on AI safety principles that Trump described as “morally binding.”
But profit incentives and global competition make voluntary AI safeguards insufficient, Shiff said.
“There’s just too much profit motive, too much of a collective action problem that confronts the whole industry globally,” he said.
AI companies and countries face pressure to develop increasingly powerful systems faster than their competitors, potentially at the expense of safety, Shiff noted. Without common safeguards, companies that prioritize safety risk falling behind, making “voluntary self-regulation difficult to sustain,” he said.
Schiff said federal oversight should address risks such as catastrophic misuse, attacks on the financial system, and threats to personal privacy without stifling innovation or weakening the United States’ ability to compete with China.
“We want to make sure what we’re doing is safe for our people and safe for others,” Schiff said.
“I want to see oversight that leads to sensible regulation of an industry that can do a lot of good and can do a lot of harm, to minimize the harms, to protect against the harms,” he said.