Former OpenAI forecaster urges Senate to curb AI research automation race

Daniel Kokotajlo, who leads the AI Futures Project, testified before a Senate subcommittee on September 30, 2026.

He argued that Anthropic and OpenAI are racing toward superintelligence by automating AI research and development, and that his team thinks this could happen as early as 2028.

He warned that declining monitorability and models that appear aligned during evaluations make misalignment harder to detect, and he recommended greater industry transparency and redirecting compute away from AI R&D.