Leadership1 publisher2 min readPublished
Sanders and Casar would ban superintelligence in the week Trump hosts AI's chief executives
The bill would stop advanced AI development until a new federal Department of Artificial Intelligence writes guidelines. Both sponsors are progressives, and Congress has so far done little to rein in the industry.
The Board Room · Leadership desk
What happened
- Bernie Sanders and Greg Casar were due to unveil legislation banning artificial superintelligence, pausing advanced AI development until guidelines are implemented, and creating a Department of Artificial Intelligence.
- Xi Jinping left Beijing on Wednesday bound for Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, where Trump was to meet him on the tarmac.
- Seven technology chief executives, among them Jeff Bezos, Sam Altman, Sundar Pichai and Jensen Huang, were reported to be attending a White House state dinner on Thursday evening.
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Why it matters
- decision An introduction by two progressive sponsors does not change a build or capex decision this quarter; the event that would reprice legislative risk is a Republican name joining the sponsor list.
- constraint Were the pause enacted, its length would sit with a department that has to be created and staffed first, so nobody planning on frontier capability could budget the outage.
- precedent A ban-and-pause text now exists in Congress as a reference point, and narrower AI bills will be positioned against it in the drafting.
Introducing a bill and constraining a company are separated by a committee referral, floor time and a signature. Sanders sits in the Senate and Casar in the House, so the text has a sponsor in each chamber [16]. The Guardian describes the two as leading progressive lawmakers and does not name a Republican backer [15]. 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 [9].
The pause is the operative clause. Development of advanced AI would stop until guidelines are implemented, and the same bill creates the Department of Artificial Intelligence to oversee advanced systems [3][4]. The restart condition is a set of guidelines. Writing them needs a department that would have to be created first, then staffed.
Sanders made the case in plain terms to the Associated Press, which received the bill first [5]. "It doesn't take a genius to say, 'slow it down,'" he said [7]. He also said: "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." [8]
Inside the labs, the bill has support the executive suites do not appear to share. Multiple employees at leading AI companies are endorsing it [6], while their chief executives were on the guest list for Thursday evening's state dinner at the White House [10].
Antonio Guterres, the UN secretary general, asked the two governments for an AI dialogue like the one Washington kept with Moscow during the cold war [13]. "Governments with the greatest AI capabilities have the greatest responsibilities to humanity, to establish channels for dialogue, transparency, trust and cooperation," Guterres said [14]. Trump answered that from the UN podium before Xi landed, saying he would reject any calls for a "globalist scheme" to control artificial intelligence [12]. A federal pause would bind developers in the United States and leave China's outside it [18]. That is where the bill's opponents will begin. AI is high on the agenda of the three-day visit [1].
What to watch
- Whether the AI company employees endorsing the bill are named publicly, and how their employers respond.
- Whether anything resembling a US-China AI channel emerges from the three-day visit.
- Whether Trump's rejection of international AI control appears in any joint statement with Xi.