Sen. Bernie Sanders unveils bill to ban artificial superintelligence and create Department of AI
Washington — 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 on the advancing technology.
The bill, provided first to the Associated Press, 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,’” Sanders, I-Vt., said in an interview with AP. “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 bill aims to dramatically slow down AI development
The legislation would permanently prohibit artificial superintelligence, 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. Violations could carry significant penalties, including up to 20 years in prison in some cases.
A number of current employees at AI companies and experts signed on in support of the bill, according to a statement shared with AP.
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 who said he was not speaking on behalf of his employer, said on the current path of development, the “most likely outcome is an existential catastrophe for humanity.”
“A ban on superintelligence development would be a positive change for the foreseeable future,” Scholz said in a statement.
The bill faces long odds but draws a line in a growing fight
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 an increasingly prominent issue. Casar, a Democrat from Texas, is the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
Potential 2028 presidential candidates have rushed in recent weeks to release proposals showing they’re taking the issue seriously. Maryland Democratic Gov. Wes Moore announced a plan to regulate AI on Tuesday, while California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order to accelerate implementation of a California law that calls for independent oversight of AI companies last week.
Sanders, a two-time presidential candidate who is now 85, has especially focused 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.
The debate over AI regulations has scrambled political alliances both in Washington and for voters across the country.
Americans have grown more concerned about the environmental impacts of artificial intelligence over the last year, according to a recent poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago.
The survey data say about half, 53%, of Americans are “extremely” or “very” concerned about artificial intelligence’s environmental impacts. That is up from 41% last year. Democrats are driving much of the increase in environmental concern, but the poll also reveals broader worries about the local impact of data centers, which power AI and cloud computing.
Trump has shown little interest in curbing AI risks
While some industry leaders have called for new safeguards, Trump has pushed in the opposite direction. On Tuesday, Trump told the United Nations General Assembly that artificial intelligence will be renamed “super intelligence.”
“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.”
AI safety is expected to be a central part of talks between Trump and China’s Xi Jinping at the White House this week as the countries compete for dominance in the sector. The prospect of slowing development in the United States while China continues on has also been one of the central arguments against sweeping restrictions.
Sanders argued that avoiding the most dangerous forms of AI would ultimately require cooperation between the two countries, comparing the challenge to nuclear arms control during the Cold War.
“Ronald Reagan, arch-conservative, was smart enough to understand that he had to sit down with Gorbachev, a communist, and work out a nuclear treaty that protected humanity,” Sanders said. “I think we can do that again now.”
Cappelletti writes for the Associated Press.
