Barack Obama urged Democrats to prioritize a “public conversation” about AI management and safety in a closed-door Manhattan fundraiser last week.

The comments by the former US president reportedly urged the party to create a sweeping framework for everything from a safety “slow-down” to domestic job losses and children’s wellbeing.

Obama’s comments follow a summer in which a band of rogue OpenAI chatbots hacked the company Hugging Face, towns across the country opposed datacenters and an AI researcher resigned in a viral social media post warning: “The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”

AI leaders have recently expressed agreement that the race for technological superiority should slow, but have also sought to appease investors, whose stake in the technology is predicted to exceed $1tn in 2026 alone.

“Once you are speaker,” Obama said to US House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, a New York-Democrat, at the fundraiser Thursday. “I would strongly urge that the Democrats put together a framework for a very public conversation,” according to a transcript first reported by the New York Times.

“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. I genuinely think it’s going to accelerate, for example, drug development in ways that can help us cure diseases. I do think that this can help us figure out pathways for a clean energy future.”

Obama later added: “I would talk about this, and I would say, ‘Here’s our plan for safety. Here’s our plan for making sure our kids are not corrupted by this,’” he said according to the Times.

Obama made the remarks as the US closes in on the midterm elections and Congress has taken little action on AI. While prominent Democratic lawmakers, and some Republicans, have called to regulate the technology, Trump has attempted to aid the AI industry by introducing legislation that would ban state regulations (the bill did not move forward). Democrats face an open presidential field in 2028.

One major flashpoint for the midterm elections is datacenters that power AI companies. Both parties have since begun running ads that oppose them, as one of the few issues, “Maga Republicans and liberal Democrats” agree on, according to an NPR analysis.

On Sunday, while on a trip to his Irish golf course, Trump told reporters that a lot of “very negative forces” are ⁠bringing up concerns ⁠about ​AI that “won’t happen”, and that his main concern was that the US remain the industry leader, according to Reuters.

“We’re leading China ​in AI. ‌We’re the ‌most sophisticated country in the world, ‌and frankly I want to keep it that way because whoever wins AI wins,” Trump told reporters when asked if ‌the AI industry should slow down or be ​more regulated.

In the past, Trump has said on social media that anyone who opposes AI datacenters is likely “backwards and poor”.

“The only reason that communities throughout the U.S.A. should not want Data Centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor. If they want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let Data Reign,” he said on TruthSocial two weeks ago.