JB Pritzker on Artificial Intelligence

JB Pritzker

Role at the time: Governor of Illinois, posting on his official X account

Statement summary

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker said Congress should enact federal AI legislation, citing a recent AI-company whistleblower report and remarks on AI risk from Sam Altman, Dario Amodei and Elon Musk. He criticized Donald Trump and JD Vance for calling AI-safety warnings a hoax, cited Illinois's own law requiring independent annual audits of frontier AI systems as a model, and called on House Speaker Mike Johnson to recall the House into session to act on AI guardrails.

“Congress needs to get back to work and enact legislation to regulate AI. Last week, a whistleblower inside Anthropic sounded the alarm on the dangers of AI. And even AI industry leaders like Sam Altman and Dario Amodei and Elon Musk admitted that it's time to put guardrails on the development of AI models to prevent extreme risks to human safety. But Donald Trump and JD Vance are doubling down on their policy failure, calling the warnings a hoax. [...] Imposing proper guardrails for AI that protect our nation is a central challenge of this generation. That's why in Illinois, we're leading the way. Long before industry leaders started sounding the alarm, I was proud to enact Illinois' nation-leading Artificial Intelligence Safety Measures Act. It made Illinois the first in the nation to require mandatory annual independent audits of frontier AI systems. Congress needs to follow Illinois' lead and act now on these and other necessary guardrails. It's time for Republican House Speaker Johnson to call members back into session immediately and rein in the AI industry before it's too late.”