Violating the rules would come with what they called the \u201ccorporate death penalty\u201d plus up to 20 years in jail, which Sanders said is the same penalty as unlawfully building nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n
The bill is one of the most aggressive of a series of congressional proposals to regulate AI. While AI was a major topic of discussion on Capitol Hill as researchers warned of cataclysmic possibilities<\/a> this month, there\u2019s little expectation that any meaningful legislation will pass this year.<\/p>\n In Congress, \u201cvirtually nothing is happening to prepare us for the tsunami that is coming,\u201d Sanders told reporters on a call Wednesday.<\/p>\n His bill with Casar includes a list of precursors that seek to define the development of \u201csuperintelligence,\u201d including: \u201cThe capacity to automate or greatly accelerate the process of artificial intelligence research and development.\u201d<\/p>\n The goal is to bar recursive self-improvement, according to an aide involved in developing the bill. Some AI specialists have warned that recursive self-improvement could lead to AI systems\u2019 training themselves to get smarter and more capable, eventually escaping human control.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re dealing with something that humanity has never seen before. It is clearly the most transformational technology in the history of the world, and it is moving very, very rapidly,\u201d Sanders said on Wednesday\u2019s call. \u201cWhen we deal with AI, it has been developed and it is being pushed by a handful, a small number, of the wealthiest people on Earth. And their main goal is to simply increase their wealth and power.\u201d<\/p>\n Experts say defining \u201csuperintelligence\u201d at a technical level will prove messy given fuzzy boundaries among different levels of AI capabilities. The lines were further blurred by President Donald Trump\u2019s announcement that he would rename \u201cartificial intelligence\u201d to \u201csuper intelligence<\/a>\u201d for the purposes of government documents in his speech Tuesday at the United Nations General Assembly.<\/p>\n The Sanders-Casar bill drew praise from the leaders of ControlAI, an advocacy group pushing for guardrails on the technology. They wrote in a blog post<\/a>: \u201cWe appreciate the choice to define superintelligent AI by its capability to overpower the federal government. This targets exactly the kind of AI development that poses a risk of extinction, without having to settle in advance the technical details of how such an AI would work.\u201d<\/p>\n Kevin Frazier, an AI policy expert and professor at the University of Texas School of Law, also commended the lawmakers\u2019 efforts. \u201cThe ban proposed by Sen. Sanders and Rep. Casar rightfully acknowledges that Congress needs to act quickly to ensure that AI development does not lead to unintended and irreversible negative consequences,\u201d he told NBC News.<\/p>\n However, Frazier said the bill ignores other avenues to prevent AI-fueled harms. He highlighted existing proposals to establish independent verification organizations that could help shed light on leading AI companies\u2019 safety practices \u2014 a proposal that has gained momentum in the past week in Silicon Valley<\/a> and at the U.N. General Assembly<\/a>.<\/p>\n Others in Washington argued that Sanders and Casar\u2019s effort is provocative but unrealistic.<\/p>\n \u201cSen. Sanders\u2019 bill will be dead on arrival with both the AI industry and Washington,\u201d according to Caleb Max, president and CEO of the National AI Association, a Washington-based trade group that advocates for business-friendly AI legislation.<\/p>\n \u201cSome CEOs would say we have already crossed the threshold set out in the bill, meaning this is a de facto AI ban,\u201d Max said.<\/p>\n He also said the penalties outlined in the bill are \u201clikely unconstitutional and, again, poorly defined.\u201d<\/p>\n Other lawmakers are proposing bills that address concerns about advanced cybersecurity capabilities that have already materialized<\/a>.<\/p>\n Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., the ranking member of the Commerce Committee, said she is working on a bill to establish meaningful guardrails on advanced AI systems and outlined a series of principles that should be part of any federal AI rules.<\/p>\n \u201cThe federal government has to be involved in standard-setting. I don\u2019t care whether you\u2019re a chemical company, a nuclear company or an AI company. The federal government needs to set standards,\u201d Cantwell told NBC News. <\/p>\n \u201cYou have to have independent testing,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n \u201cYou need to work on an international strategy,\u201d she added, arguing that the president \u201cshould be talking to the Chinese about \u2014 what are you going to do to, basically, alert each other on escapes of AI agent swarming practices and have a red phone to talk about it. … You need to have an incident reporting system with international partners.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump is scheduled to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping<\/a> in Washington, D.C., beginning Wednesday evening. AI is likely to be a topic of discussion, with OpenAI\u2019s Sam Altman, Apple\u2019s Tim Cook, Trump\u2019s former AI czar, David Sacks, and others <\/a>attending a state dinner for Xi on Thursday night.<\/p>\n After a meeting with a Chinese delegation Sunday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he had proposed creating a notification mechanism to alert the other country about severe AI incidents. It is unclear whether that mechanism will be implemented.<\/p>\n If Democrats win control of the Senate in the Nov. 3 midterm elections, Cantwell is in line to chair the Commerce Committee.<\/p>\n The current chair is Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who is working on a separate bill<\/a> with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn. Cruz has said<\/a> it will \u201caddress the catastrophic risks,\u201d including biological or nuclear threats.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re continuing to work and negotiate to reach bipartisan agreements,\u201d Cruz told NBC News on Monday, without giving a timeline to release text of the bill. \u201cWe\u2019re not there yet.\u201d<\/p>\n AI safety advocates have criticized <\/a>the Cruz-Thune-Klobuchar proposal for being too light-touch. The groups say any AI regulation must mandate safety testing, while the senators\u2019 current proposal would rely too heavily on tests the companies could perform themselves<\/a>.<\/p>\n The House has already left town until the week after the midterm elections. The Senate is poised to work this week and potentially next week before it breaks for the election.<\/p>\n Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana, the only Republican who attended a closed-door briefing for lawmakers with AI specialists last week, tried to get unanimous consent to pass a \u201ckill switch\u201d bill last week \u2014\u00a0which would require AI companies to have an emergency shutoff \u2014 only for Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., to block it.<\/p>\n Kennedy was pessimistic that there would be any legislative action on AI in the lame duck session before 2027.<\/p>\n![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1789748464003_now_current_kapur_ai_lawmakers_proposal_260918_S3_1920x1080-yp3pm8.jpg\")
<\/p>\n