Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, SENATE NEWS—Gallego seeks Senate committee formation on AI risks, (Sep 11, 2026)

By Nora Macalus

The Arizona senator said a bipartisan panel should be formed at the start of the next Congress to develop a “coherent federal approach” to artificial intelligence.

Senator Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) asked Senate leaders to establish a bipartisan Senate Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence at the beginning of the next Congress to study the potential and risks of AI, coordinate oversight across jurisdictions, and develop recommendations for a “coherent federal approach” to the technology.

“AI is likely to be one of the most transformative technologies in human history,” Gallego wrote in a letter to Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). “But the same technology also presents serious and rapidly evolving challenges to our workforce, national security, elections, privacy, critical infrastructure, children, and the safety of the public.”

In a press release accompanying the letter, Gallego cited recent comments from former Anthropic scientists warning of AI’s potential to destroy humanity, perhaps in the next decade, without a plan to prevent that from happening.

“Leading AI researchers have warned that increasingly autonomous systems could create risks ranging from large-scale misuse to circumstances in which humans have difficulty maintaining meaningful control over advanced systems,” he said in his letter to Thune and Schumer.

In addition to these threats, “credible economic analyses estimate that generative AI could expose the equivalent of 300 million full-time jobs worldwide to automation, with roughly two-thirds of U.S. occupations exposed to some degree of disruption,” Gallego wrote.

“Congress does not need to resolve every disagreement among experts about timelines or probabilities to recognize that both the upside and the downside of this technology warrant an urgent and comprehensive response,” he said.

A select committee modeled on prior panels designed for previous “novel, cross-cutting national challenges” could provide “a dedicated venue for direct, sustained engagement with industry, academia, national security officials, and labor,” Gallego said. Congress’ current structure, with jurisdiction over various aspects of AI falling to various committees, “is not built for this,” he said. The select committee should be bipartisan in membership and leadership, have subpoena power, and be charged with producing actionable legislative recommendations, Gallego said. It should also hear from representatives of AI companies, independent researchers, workers and officials from industries disrupted by AI, and national security officials, among others, he said. “Artificial intelligence is moving quickly,” Gallego said. “Congress must move with it.”

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