Attorney General Nessel Calls on Congress to Protect Americans from Unchecked AI Development

LANSING – Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has joined a bipartisan coalition of 25 other attorneys general in calling on Congress to immediately regulate the artificial intelligence (AI) industry. In a letter sent to Congressional leadership, Attorney General Nessel 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.

“AI carries enormous risks that we should not ignore by allowing big tech to regulate itself,” said Attorney General Nessel. “Congress needs to exercise its oversight duty and create guardrails for this technology before these powerful systems cause irreparable harm to our global infrastructure. I stand with my colleagues in insisting the government establish a meaningful process of oversight while allowing states to retain the ability to protect their residents. Let’s not wait for the next crisis to act.”

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 Nessel 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, Nessel 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.

Joining Attorney General Nessel in sending the letter to Congress are the attorneys general of American Samoa, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawai’i, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin.

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