The Sanders Institute is hosting Sen. Bernie Sanders, Congressman Ro Khanna, and author and filmmaker Naomi Klein on Tuesday afternoon for a livestreamed discussion designed to explore “the progressive vision for artificial intelligence and robotics, and where we go from here.”

Khanna (D-Calif.) and Klein are both fellows at the institute, cofounded by Sanders’ (I-Vt.) wife and son, Jane O’Meara Sanders and David Driscoll. The Sanders Institute over recent years has convened an array of conferences and events focused on bringing together the best minds, top experts, and policy advocates on a host of issues.

Tuesday’s event on AI, scheduled to kick off at 3:00 pm ET, can be viewed at the stream below:

“AI is the most far-reaching and pivotal technological revolution in the history of humanity. It will impact every man, woman, and child in this country and around the globe. It has the potential to reshape the world,” notes the Sanders Institute. “The future is not inevitable—and the choices we make now will determine whether those changes make the world better or worse.”

“The US Congress is totally unprepared to deal with the consequences,” the institute warns. “It is vitally important that we have a serious discussion of how we protect workers, how we protect our privacy, how we protect the health of our children, how we preserve our planet, and how we address the real possibility that AI can become smarter than humans and escape from human control.”

Khanna, a potential 2028 presidential candidate who authored the book Progressive Capitalism: How to Make Tech Work for All of Us, has been a leading voice in the US House of Representatives on the issue of AI. In a 2024 New York Times op-ed, Khanna argued that it’s vital to ensure that the future of AI and other evolving technologies “center the dignity and economic security of working-class Americans.”

Meanwhile, Sanders, who recently introduced the Artificial Intelligence Data Center Moratorium Act with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), highlighted in a Wall Street Journal op-ed earlier this month that billionaires are already “investing enormous sums in AI and robotics not to improve life for working families but to expand their own wealth and power.”

Klein has similarly sounded the alarm about far-right tech oligarchs, including in a “must-read” essay with Astra Taylor about the fight against “end times fascism” published by The Guardian last year. The pair plans to release a related book in September.

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