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“Nearly every day, there is a frightening new story about how Big Tech companies are losing control of the technology they are developing, with potentially cataclysmic results,” Sanders said. “The leaders of the major AI companies publicly acknowledge that they do not fully understand the technology and that it is escaping their control. It is irresponsible for society to allow them to move forward and make these products even more advanced. That’s why I am introducing legislation to immediately pause the development of increasingly powerful AI and ban the creation of systems that humanity cannot fully control — at home and around the world. The future of humanity cannot be left in the hands of a handful of Big Tech oligarchs. The American people and people throughout the world must determine that future.”

“If we allow Artificial Superintelligence to be built, it could risk the security, freedom, and lives of Americans,” Casar said. “Despite its potential deadly consequences, cutting-edge AI technology is less regulated than the average food truck. That must change. In just four years, we have gone from the first version of ChatGPT to AI models so powerful they cannot be properly controlled. Congress should immediately ban AI systems too powerful to control.”

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The Artificial Superintelligence Ban Act addresses these recent events and holds these frontier labs to their words by:

• Banning AI superintelligence so no person or entity may develop or deploy Superintelligent AI systems that surpass human intelligence or have the capacity to overthrow human governments, or systems that have dangerous abilities like subverting shutdown commands.
• Pausing advanced AI development until a new, federal AI regulatory body is up and running and has established clear rules and model review process to ensure safe and secure development and deployment of AI. 
• Establishing a new cabinet-level federal agency to safeguard the public from the dangers of artificial intelligence, including by enforcing a prohibition on artificial superintelligence. This agency will be advised by an Artificial Intelligence Advisory Board comprised of experts on artificial intelligence to provide independent scientific and technical advice on matters related to artificial intelligence. The agency will: 
  • Monitor frontier AI systems at all stages of the lifecycle for dangerous capabilities. 
  • Supervise the removal of dangerous capabilities.
  • Supervise the destruction of artificial superintelligence.
• Setting penalties for any person or entity that attempts to violate or circumvent the pauses and prohibitions laid out in this bill. Entities shall be subject to the corporate death penalty, and persons shall be subject to not more than 20 years in prison, which is similar to existing penalties related to unlawfully developing nuclear weapons.
• Working to ban superintelligence around the world by setting the international policy of the United States to pursue international agreements, allied coordination, and policies such as export controls to prevent the development of artificial superintelligence anywhere in the world.

Read a summary here.