THIS IS HUGE: Barack Obama just told Democrats exactly …

THIS IS HUGE: Barack Obama just told Democrats exactly what they need to do about AI. Thank you, Obama, for stepping up on this.

Read that again.

At a private fundraiser in Manhattan, Obama spent nearly an hour with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, urging him to build a real framework for AI policy if Democrats win back the House this November.

His message was direct. “This is something that is moving very fast in private hands, and if we don’t get on top of it, I think can be dangerous,” Obama said. “If we do get on top of it, I do think it’s beneficial.”

Obama wasn’t playing to either extreme. He said he considers himself neither an “accelerationist” nor a “doomer,” just someone who thinks this needs a real plan, not silence.

And he didn’t stop at Congress. Obama said candidates running for president in 2028 should make AI one of their central agendas, with a clear plan for the safety risks and the economic fallout.

He didn’t shy away from the hard part either. “I would be thinking about the economic impacts in very concrete ways,” Obama said, pointing to what happens if large numbers of people “can’t find full-time work because they’ve been rendered redundant.”

This comes right as anxiety over AI has hit a boiling point. An Anthropic researcher just resigned publicly, warning “the people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.” Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei called for a global slowdown. Sam Altman and Elon Musk both said they agreed with him.

Meanwhile, the Trump White House has taken the opposite approach entirely. Trump has said he has no concerns about AI’s risks, only about falling behind China, and has said people who oppose AI data centers must prefer to be “backwards and poor.”

Jeffries responded plainly: “President Obama is correct that decisive action must be taken on artificial intelligence. Republicans have abdicated their responsibility to govern on behalf of the American people. We will not repeat their error.”

While Trump waves off the warnings of the very people building this technology, Obama is telling his party to get serious, get organized, and lead. Thank you, Obama, for saying what needed to be said.