Over the last several months, the two leading frontier AI labs have shown brazen behavior. It started with announcements from Open AI that established how powerful their LLM-powered agents have become. They then handed the baton to Anthropic, whose employees debated the probability of human extinction. The campaign crescendoed with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodi releasing a letter titled “We Must Pace the Frontier,” enumerating harms his own company might cause, then concluding catastrophe can only be avoided if the government slows competitors and lets labs lead. Open AI CEO Sam Altman quickly tweeted support.

Internally, these labs embrace messianic thinking, casting themselves as humanity’s only hope. This summer was their attempt to induct the rest of us into this ideology—but it didn’t work. Instead, it made us ask, “What the hell is going on in those labs?”

I published an op-ed in _The New York Times_ calling on Congress to begin a public fact-finding mission. I suggested three key areas: isolate the specific systems creating problems, examine internal safety procedures (including unauthorized hacking attacks by autonomous agents), and investigate the role of apocalyptic futurist ideologies driving reckless decisions.

“We need to stop letting a small number of private companies dictate how we feel about A.I.,” I concluded. “It’s Congress’s turn to step in on our behalf to find out what’s really going on.”