WASHINGTON — Former Vice President Kamala Harris is backing a slowdown in the development of the most advanced artificial intelligence systems, saying stronger safeguards are needed to prevent the technology from creating risks that governments and the public cannot control. In a statement Monday, Harris urged Congress to establish a federal body dedicated to overseeing artificial intelligence. She also called for an international agreement on AI that would include China, reflecting the global reach of the technology and the difficulty of managing it through U.S. policy alone. “The frontier of artificial intelligence is advancing at an alarming speed,” Harris said in a statement posted to X. She argued that slowing the development of leading-edge systems would not require abandoning potential benefits, including life-saving applications in medicine. “Rather, it is about setting up sensible guardrails so that AI does not completely escape human control and endanger our safety and collective future,” she said. Harris’ comments come amid growing concern among some technology leaders that the race to build increasingly capable systems is moving faster than safety research, regulation and public oversight. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei recently called on AI companies to moderate the development of their most advanced models. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Elon Musk later expressed support for the push, an unusual alignment among executives associated with competing companies. The debate has significant consequences beyond Silicon Valley. AI systems are increasingly being developed for use in health care, workplaces and other public-facing settings, while policymakers continue to weigh questions about safety, accountability and who should be responsible when automated systems cause harm. Harris’ proposal would put Congress at the center of that debate by creating a dedicated federal oversight structure. Her call for an agreement involving China also underscores the challenge of preventing a technological arms race in which countries and private companies prioritize speed over safeguards.