Sanders and Casar unveil a bill to ban artificial superintelligence and create a Department of AI
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, are unveiling Wednesday legislation that would ban artificial superintelligence, pause advanced AI development until federal guidelines exist, and create a Department of Artificial Intelligence, ABC News reports, carrying AP’s Joey Cappelletti (Sep. 23, 5:03 a.m. ET). AP got the bill first. Multiple employees at leading AI companies are endorsing.
Under the bill’s definition, artificial superintelligence means a system that exceeds human cognitive ability, or that has enough capability to plan and execute the destruction or disempowerment of humanity: AI past human level that could take people out of the loop.
The package would temporarily pause most advanced systems until new federal safety rules exist, then require federal approval before deploy. Violations could include up to 20 years in prison in some cases. The proposed Department of AI would be a cabinet-style agency to write and enforce those safety rules before advanced systems ship.
Sanders told AP, “It doesn’t take a genius to say, ‘slow it down.’” He pointed to systems smarter than humans that could act independently of human control. AP notes Trump has resisted greater oversight and restates the president’s Tuesday UN General Assembly push to rename AI as “super intelligence” in U.S. documents.
Sanders added, “I think Trump has very little understanding of what this issue is about,” and said the White House is “mainly concerned about the economic implications of a slowdown.”
Endorsers via AP include Juan Felipe Cerón Uribe, an OpenAI Safety Systems researcher, who said “superintelligence could either go extremely right or extremely wrong.” Swante Scholz, a Google DeepMind software engineer speaking only for himself, said the “most likely outcome is an existential catastrophe” and favors an ASI ban “for the foreseeable future.”
AP puts the bill at long odds in a Republican-controlled Congress.
Progressives wrote a ban, a pause, and a Department of AI the same week the White House rebranded the noun and China’s open labs walked onto the Security Council AI brief with Altman.
A midterm signal written for a Republican floor.