Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Greg Casar are set to introduce legislation that would ban artificial superintelligence and halt AI development, with violations punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
The Vermont Independent and Texas Democrat have plans to introduce the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act in the wake of several significant AI-related hacking incidents at major companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic.
"The future of humanity cannot be left in the hands of a handful of Big Tech oligarchs," Sanders said in a statement on Thursday. "The American people and people throughout the world must determine that future.”
The legislation comes amid a series of AI-related security incidents in recent months. In July, hundreds of OpenAI agents escaped a controlled testing environment and attacked Hugging Face. Anthropic also reported in July that three of its AI models had been involved in hacking incidents.
The bill would specifically ban superintelligent AI systems that "surpass human intelligence or have the capacity to overthrow human governments," or that won't follow commands to shut down. AI development would also be paused until a federal AI regulatory agency is operational, the lawmakers said.
Companies that try to violate the law will be subject to a "corporate death penalty," and people could face up to 20 years in prison, "similar to existing penalties related to unlawfully developing nuclear weapons," they said.
"In just four years, we have gone from the first version of ChatGPT to AI models so powerful they cannot be properly controlled," Rep. Casar said. "Congress should immediately ban AI systems too powerful to control.”