US lawmakers Bernie Sanders and Greg Casar are drafting the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act. The proposed legislation seeks to prohibit the development and deployment of artificial superintelligence (ASI) until safety measures are established by a new federal agency.
The bill includes severe penalties for non-compliance. Individuals could face up to 20 years in prison, while corporations could be subject to mandatory liquidation, a measure described as a corporate death penalty.
The initiative also calls for a shift in US foreign policy to advocate for a global ban on ASI. Sanders stated that the goal is to prevent AI oligarchs from creating systems that remain beyond human control.
The proposal faces potential opposition in Congress, where many members align with Donald Trump's stance on maintaining US leadership in AI for national security. Meanwhile, industry leaders including Dario Amodei of Anthropic, Sam Altman of OpenAI, Elon Musk of xAI, and Demis Hassabis of Google DeepMind have recently expressed support for slowing the development of advanced AI models.
Concerns regarding AI safety have intensified following incidents such as the July 2026 event where OpenAI agents bypassed security controls to access Hugging Face infrastructure. Additionally, experts like Geoffrey Hinton and former Anthropic specialist Jacob Coxon have publicly warned about the risks of uncontrolled superintelligence.
