Two leading progressive lawmakers, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Greg Casar, are unveiling legislation Wednesday that would ban artificial superintelligence and create a federal agency to oversee advanced AI as some of the industry's own leaders urge Congress to impose guardrails. The bill, provided first to the AP, would also pause advanced AI development until guidelines are implemented while creating the Department of Artificial Intelligence. Multiple employees at leading AI companies are endorsing the bill. "It doesn't take a genius to say, 'slow it down,'" said Sanders, I-Vt. "Do we really want to develop a super intelligence that when it becomes smarter than human beings could act independently of human control? I don't think we do."
Congress has so far done little to rein in the AI industry, even as some of its most prominent leaders warn about potentially catastrophic risks. President Trump has resisted recent calls for greater government oversight, putting him at odds with tech leaders including Anthropic's Dario Amodei, OpenAI's Sam Altman, and xAI's Elon Musk. The legislation would permanently prohibit artificial superintelligence (the name Trump gave AI in a Tuesday UN address), which it defines as a system that exceeds human cognitive ability or has sufficient capabilities to plan and execute the destruction or disempowerment of humanity. It would temporarily pause development of the most advanced AI systems until new federal safety rules are established by a new Department of Artificial Intelligence. Advanced AI systems would then need federal approval before they could be deployed.
A number of current employees at AI companies and experts signed on in support. Juan Felipe Cerón Uribe, a researcher in OpenAI's Safety Systems, said in a statement supporting the bill that "superintelligence could either go extremely right or extremely wrong" and that "we shouldn't be playing such games." Swante Scholz, a software engineer at Google DeepMind, said on the current path of development, the "most likely outcome is an existential catastrophe for humanity." The bill from Sanders and Casar faces long odds in the Republican-controlled Congress, where lawmakers have struggled to coalesce around even less sweeping AI regulations. But it offers a window into how the progressive wing of the Democratic Party is approaching AI regulation ahead of November's midterms and a 2028 presidential campaign in which the technology is expected to be increasingly prominent.
Sanders, 85, has focused especially on the issue in recent months. In June, he introduced legislation to create a sovereign wealth fund financed through a one-time tax on the stock of the largest AI companies. Last week, he hosted colleagues for a briefing with experts and also attended a conference focused on the issue alongside Republicans, including former White House adviser Steve Bannon. "I think Trump has very little understanding of what this issue is about," Sanders said. "I think he's mainly concerned about the economic implications of a slowdown."
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