Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX) announced the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act on Thursday, legislation intended “to stop AI oligarchs from building machines humans cannot control,” according to a news release from Sanders’ office. If enacted, violators could face a “corporate death penalty” and up to 20 years in prison.
The forthcoming bill calls for creating a cabinet-level agency to oversee all AI development in the U.S. It would “permanently ban the development and deployment of superintelligent AI and temporarily pause advanced AI development until a federal regulator has established safety rules.”
Among its sweeping powers, the new agency would be authorized to set penalties for developers who violate the law — including the physical destruction of “non-compliant tech systems.“
AI is the defining technological race of the 21st century, and the winner will control the future. At a moment when the U.S. and China are locked in a fierce struggle for dominance in the global AI arms race, even a temporary U.S. pause on advanced AI development would hand China a decisive advantage. Perhaps that’s Sanders’ goal.
Fox News reports:
The measure explicitly targets systems capable of matching or exceeding human cognitive performance—specifically outlawing any AI model that exhibits the capacity to subvert shutdown commands, execute unauthorized cyberattacks, or undermine the U.S. government.
It would also direct the U.S. to pursue international agreements to prevent superintelligence from being developed anywhere in the world.
Does Sanders actually believe that China would be a good-faith player in any agreement?
The socialist senator offered the following rationale for the legislation:
Nearly every day, there is a frightening new story about how Big Tech companies are losing control of the technology they are developing, with potentially cataclysmic results. The leaders of the major AI companies publicly acknowledge that they do not fully understand the technology and that it is escaping their control.
It is irresponsible for society to allow them to move forward and make these products even more advanced. That’s why I am introducing legislation to immediately pause the development of increasingly powerful AI and ban the creation of systems that humanity cannot fully control — at home and around the world. The future of humanity cannot be left in the hands of a handful of Big Tech oligarchs. The American people and people throughout the world must determine that future.
Casar, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, noted:
If we allow Artificial Superintelligence to be built, it could risk the security, freedom, and lives of Americans. Despite its potential deadly consequences, cutting-edge AI technology is less regulated than the average food truck. That must change. In just four years, we have gone from the first version of ChatGPT to AI models so powerful they cannot be properly controlled. Congress should immediately ban AI systems too powerful to control.
In a July interview with Politico, Casar said, “Democrats were ‘in the wilderness’ when it comes to AI issues and called for the party to be ‘AI populists’ who ‘stand with working people who know in their gut that AI right now is just going to make a few billionaires into trillionaires while making millions of Americans poorer, less safe and less free.’”
I fully understand the dangers inherent in advanced AI technology. But the technology cannot be uninvented; the race cannot simply be called off.
The U.S. cannot afford even a temporary pause in its development. Doing so would effectively cede the field to China — which would like nothing more — and the consequences could be disastrous.
Like it or not, the atomic bombs developed through the Manhattan Project brought World War II to an abrupt end. Japan announced its surrender within days of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, sparing the United States from an invasion that military planners feared could cost hundreds of thousands of American lives and result in more than one million total U.S. casualties.
The moral questions surrounding that decision remain fiercely debated, but the strategic lesson is difficult to ignore: When a transformative technology emerges, the nation that masters it first can determine the course of history. Imagine if Hitler had acquired the bomb in 1944.
Artificial superintelligence may be frightening, and its development unquestionably demands stringent safeguards. But fear cannot become an excuse for unilateral surrender. If the U.S. abandons this frontier while China presses ahead, Beijing will gain more than a technological advantage; it could acquire the power to shape the global order. We cannot afford to cede the defining technology of the future to our foremost adversary.
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Below is a summary of the proposed bill, published on Sanders’ Senate website [Emphasis added]:
Banning AI superintelligence so no person or entity may develop or deploy Superintelligent AI systems that surpass human intelligence or have the capacity to overthrow human governments, or systems that have dangerous abilities like subverting shutdown commands.
Pausing advanced AI development until a new, federal AI regulatory body is up and running and has established clear rules and model review process to ensure safe and secure development and deployment of AI.
Establishing a new cabinet-level federal agency to safeguard the public from the dangers of artificial intelligence, including by enforcing a prohibition on artificial superintelligence. This agency will be advised by an Artificial Intelligence Advisory Board comprised of experts on artificial intelligence to provide independent scientific and technical advice on matters related to artificial intelligence.
The agency will:
Monitor frontier AI systems at all stages of the lifecycle for dangerous capabilities.
Supervise the removal of dangerous capabilities.
Supervise the destruction of artificial superintelligence.
Setting penalties for any person or entity that attempts to violate or circumvent the pauses and prohibitions laid out in this bill. Entities shall be subject to the corporate death penalty, and persons shall be subject to not more than 20 years in prison, which is similar to existing penalties related to unlawfully developing nuclear weapons.
Working to ban superintelligence around the world by setting the international policy of the United States to pursue international agreements, allied coordination, and policies such as export controls to prevent the development of artificial superintelligence anywhere in the world.
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