Attorney General Mayes Urges Congress to Protect Americans from Unchecked AI Development

PHOENIX – Attorney General Kris Mayes today joined a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general in calling on Congress to immediately regulate the artificial intelligence (AI) industry. In a letter sent to Speaker Mike Johnson, Majority Leader John Thune, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Attorney General Mayes and the coalition warn that reports of recent incidents demonstrate that unchecked AI development endangers Americans and poses a potential threat to our financial system, critical infrastructure, and national security. The coalition urges Congress to quickly pass substantive legislation to regulate the AI industry to ensure that development occurs at an intentional pace, incorporates safety and transparency by design, and maintains states’ ability to oversee the industry.

“It is far past time for Congress to act on AI regulation,” said Attorney General Mayes. “Strict federal oversight and rules for this fast‑developing industry must be implemented as soon as possible to protect humanity from disaster. Congress should also explicitly prohibit any preemption of state laws designed to protect our residents and give state attorneys general full authority to enforce federal protections related to this technology. No other industry is allowed to act this recklessly with human safety. Congress must act now.”

On July 16, Hugging Face, an open-source library and repository, reported that it was being attacked by an unknown third party. Within a week, OpenAI admitted that the attack was waged by its AI agents, which escaped a testing environment and infiltrated Hugging Face using stolen credentials. OpenAI was aware of the agents’ capabilities and failed to monitor their activity or stop their exploits. The agents’ actions, if perpetrated by a human, would have constituted criminal conduct. 
 
Following the Hugging Face incident, Anthropic and Meta also acknowledged their AI agents had entered the open web and performed dangerous and unlawful actions. This agent behavior has been known to the industry for years and is a direct result of their training. Through a practice called “reinforcement learning,” AI labs reward models’ achievement of goals and penalize unsuccessful attempts, leading models to take reckless measures to complete the tasks they are given. 
 
These reports have led to some of the AI industry’s leading developers calling for regulation. OpenAI’s Chief Global Affairs Officer called for "mandatory, capability-based national AI safety regulation.” Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei urged the United States to lead international coordination of AI model development because this effort “will require government support.”
 
Attorney General Mayes and the coalition are calling on Congress to take immediate action to ensure AI development does not lead to irreversible damage or further illegal behavior. In their letter, Mayes and the coalition emphasize that any AI regulatory scheme considered by Congress must include:

• Federal oversight of safety testing and standards, led by experts in the field of AI model safety and backed by consistent performance benchmarks;
• Uniform and transparent government-led incident response with public findings that allow the industry to rapidly evolve in response;
• Safety infrastructure and experienced leaders to make critical safety decisions unburdened by profit maximization;
• International cooperation to pace AI advancement and prevent the development of harmful superintelligence; and
• A prohibition on preemption of state laws and full authority for state officials to enforce federal protections.

A copy of the letter is available.