Senator Bernie Sanders has used a nine-minute video interview with Anthropic's AI chatbot Claude to argue that meaningful regulation of artificial intelligence has effectively been blocked — not by lawmakers, but by the technology companies pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into the political process to prevent it. The exchange, published on Sanders' official YouTube channel on 19 March 2026, drew attention not only for what was discussed, but for a moment in which the AI reversed its own position after the senator pushed back on its initial answer.
The video began with Sanders questioning Claude on how AI companies collect personal data — browsing history, location, purchasing behaviour, even how long a user pauses on a webpage — and feed it into systems that build detailed profiles without meaningful consent. Claude acknowledged that most Americans 'click agree on terms of service without reading them' and 'have no idea' that their data is being combined across thousands of sources to create profiles used for targeted advertising, dynamic pricing, and political micro-targeting.
