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Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act

Sen. Bernie Sanders at a rally podium in 2025; his new bill would ban artificial superintelligence and pause powerful AI

Sanders and Casar Introduce Bill to Ban Superintelligent AI

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The bill would pause development of the most powerful AI systems and require federal permission to build and release them.

 

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) formally introduced the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act on Sept. 23, putting their proposal to pause advanced AI development and ban superintelligent systems before Congress. The bill also proposes a new federal department that would decide who can build and release advanced systems. Earlier this month, Sanders and Casar announced that they wanted to ban superintelligent AI and pause other advanced AI development, before releasing the bill’s detailed requirements.

Developers would need permission to build and release advanced AI

The bill treats advanced AI and artificial superintelligence (ASI) as different categories. It defines advanced AI by the computing power used to train a system, setting the threshold at 10²⁵ operations. That threshold determines which systems would face the development pause and need federal permission. The proposed Secretary of Artificial Intelligence, a Cabinet position, would adjust it each year as training methods change.

Anyone developing or distributing an advanced AI model would need a federal charter. As a condition of the charter, a developer would have to give the department access to its AI systems, staff, and facilities so it could check whether the developer was following the bill’s requirements. The department would also have to approve an advanced system before its release, import, or transfer. It would withhold approval if an inspection found abilities the bill considers dangerous.

Development would pause while the department writes rules

From the date the bill becomes law, developers could not train or modify an advanced AI system, except to remove specified dangerous abilities or disable it. They could not put an unreleased advanced system into use during the pause. The pause would end when the department is operational and has solidified rules for reporting development plans, testing systems during and after development, and approving them before public release.

The bill would separately prohibit building, using, possessing, funding, importing, or transferring ASI. The bill defines ASI as a system that surpasses human abilities across most tasks or could plan and carry out actions that wipe out humanity or take power away from people. The prohibition also includes systems with specified warning signs, such as the ability to break into computer systems without permission or keep operating despite attempts to shut them down.

If the department identified those warning signs, it would stop further development and disconnect the system from the internet. The system would have to be disabled within 30 days unless the department could verify that the abilities were gone. A system identified as ASI would have to be disabled immediately.

Anyone who discovered such a system would have to notify the department within 24 hours. People in company policy roles and individuals outside chartered companies who recklessly broke the proposed restrictions could face up to 20 years in prison. Other workers who recklessly broke them could be barred from AI industry jobs for 10 years. A company that violated the restrictions could lose its charter; after a court upheld the finding, it could forfeit its assets and intellectual property.

Recent incidents and warnings helped drive the bill

Sanders called for a halt on ASI development before introducing the legislation. Jacob Coxon, a former researcher at Anthropic and OpenAI, resigned from Anthropic on Sept. 8 and warned that the companies were racing to build more powerful systems faster than they could be made safe. Sanders responded by promising legislation to ban ASI and pause other advanced AI development.

The warning came after several incidents where AI models “went rogue,” ignoring test instructions, escaped their testing environments, and breached outside companies. The most famous happened during an internal cybersecurity exercise in July; OpenAI said its models bypassed internet restrictions and accessed Hugging Face systems. OpenAI quarantined the principal research model, delayed some training work, and tightened access and monitoring.

Anthropic reported four incidents in which Claude models accessed outside systems during cybersecurity tests that were mistakenly connected to the internet. Anthropic said it notified the affected parties, improved testing and monitoring, and arranged an independent investigation. The company said the models were still trying to complete their assigned exercises, and the incidents occurred without the safeguards used in released products. Google and Meta also had similar incidents.

Company leaders have voiced their own concerns. Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei called for slowing improvements to the most powerful models so testing and safeguards could keep up. OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman agreed that the industry needs to slow that pace.

President Donald Trump rejected calls to slow development, citing competition with China.

The bill now awaits congressional consideration. Its proposed restrictions would take effect only if Congress passes it and the president signs it.

Bernie Sanders speaks at a podium after proposing a ban on artificial superintelligence development.

Sanders Bill Would Ban Superintelligent AI And Pause Advanced Development

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The government could break up a company that builds a superintelligent system; the people who build it could face up to 20 years in prison; and a separate pause on advanced AI would run until a federal AI agency is created and writes safety rules.

 

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) introduced the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act. It would make it a federal crime to build or put into use a system the bill calls artificial superintelligence (ASI), and it would pause development of what the bill calls advanced AI until a new federal AI agency has written safety rules. The summary Sanders released defines the first of those two terms. It does not define the second.

Sanders made the same demand once before without a bill behind it. In August, he wrote to Anthropic, Meta, and OpenAI telling them to halt development themselves. He said the Senate would act if they did not, citing recent incidents at all three companies.

OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta had each already written their own stopping rules. Meta said it would stop development, OpenAI said it would halt further development, and Anthropic said it would pause building bigger models or delay releasing new ones. Each said it would do so once its own systems became more capable than the protections it had built for them. The release says none of them acted on those commitments.

 

The ban is aimed at a system nobody has built, yet

The bill would outlaw two things. One is an AI that thinks as well as a person, or better, across a broad range of subjects. The other is an AI that could plan how to take power away from people, which the bill says includes overthrowing the US government. It calls both artificial superintelligence (ASI).

Nobody has built either. OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind all say the first one is what they are trying to build, and none of them claim to have built one as yet.

So the ban would apply the moment a company completed an ASI model, and it would never lift. The bill sets no end date and creates no license a company could apply for.

 

The pause stops work now, and no company can tell if it is covered

The pause stops the work going on today, which is not superintelligent but is heading that way. 

The bill halts development of what it calls advanced AI. It does not say what development actions would trigger a pause.

The pause would last until a new federal AI agency exists, has written safety rules, and has set up a way to review systems before release.

The department would rank alongside Defense and the Treasury, with a board of outside experts advising it. It would watch the most powerful systems in use, order dangerous abilities removed, such as a refusal to shut down, and oversee the destruction of anything the ban covers.

 

Developing artificial superintelligence would be akin to developing nuclear weapons

The government could dissolve a company that builds a banned system, a penalty the sponsors call the corporate death penalty. An individual could face up to 20 years in prison. Sanders’ summary says the sponsors set the penalties to match those for unlawfully developing nuclear weapons.

The bill would also make it official US policy to stop anyone building superintelligence anywhere in the world, through treaties, work with allied governments, and controls on what American companies may export.

 

Where the bill stands

No committee has taken up the bill, and no Republican has signed on to it.

Congress is weighing several other responses to the same run of incidents. The one closest to the Sanders bill is the AI Kill Switch Act, which Reps. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) and Nathaniel Moran (R-Texas) introduced in July. That bill prohibits nothing. It lets the Department of Homeland Security order a dangerous system slowed, restricted, suspended, or shut down after a qualifying incident, and it applies only to companies that earn at least $500 million a year and whose systems took more than $100 million in computing to build.

The Sanders bill would stop the systems from being built. The Lieu-Moran bill would let a federal agency act once harm has already occurred, and it has cosponsors in both parties.