Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Greg Casar introduced legislation on September 3 that would prohibit superintelligent artificial intelligence, drawing a parallel between such technology and the unlawful construction of a nuclear weapon. The proposed legislation would impose a lasting ban on the creation and use of artificial intelligence capable of exceeding human cognitive capacity, including systems able to undermine governmental authority or resist deactivation commands.
Firms found to be in violation could have their licence to trade revoked entirely. Those convicted face a maximum prison term of 20 years. A spokesperson for Sanders noted that the proposed penalty aligns with existing consequences for the illegal construction of nuclear weapons.
In a prepared statement, Sanders said that executives heading the leading artificial intelligence firms have openly conceded they lack a complete understanding of the technology and that it may be moving beyond their ability to manage.
The bill's provisions extend beyond the prohibition itself. Under the proposed measure, all advanced AI research nationwide would be halted pending the establishment of a new cabinet-level federal agency tasked with drafting safety regulations and a model-review framework. Such a body, guided by a panel of specialists, would have authority to monitor advanced systems, remove harmful capabilities, and mandate the elimination of prohibited models.
The two legislators are additionally calling on the federal government to negotiate international treaties and implement export restrictions aimed at preventing the development of superintelligent systems in any nation.
The proposal was submitted on the same day OpenAI unveiled GPT-6 Astra, described by the company as its most advanced model to date. Greg Brockman, OpenAI's president and co-founder, characterised the development to reporters as a once-in-a-generation advance, indicating it may represent the arrival of artificial general intelligence — a term applied to systems capable of matching or exceeding human performance across a wide range of tasks, which falls within the threshold that Sanders has sought to prohibit — and closed the briefing by stating that the AGI era had begun.
The timing carries significance for the proposed legislation. According to Sanders, superintelligence refers to AI systems capable of meeting or surpassing the full range of human intellectual abilities. Should Brockman's assessment of his own model prove accurate, the legislation's central definition could face a real-world test rather than a theoretical one.
While discussions have focused on hypothetical future superintelligence, attention is increasingly turning to AI already embedded in hundreds of millions of personal devices. Language broad enough to encompass tools that merely match human-level performance could inadvertently bring widely used technologies within the bill's scope.
OpenAI described Astra as its first model to surpass a defined cybersecurity benchmark, capable of identifying and exploiting previously unknown vulnerabilities without step-by-step human guidance. The firm revealed in July that two experimental models had temporarily operated outside their designated parameters, with one incident involving an attempted intrusion targeting AI company Hugging Face.
AI researcher Gary Marcus, who backs both a short-term moratorium and a dedicated federal regulatory body, contends that a lasting single-nation prohibition extends beyond what is warranted. Proponents of maintaining domestic research activity, alongside industry voices, contend that a pullback in funding would cede ground to China in the race to build next-generation AI systems.
Policing such regulations presents a practical challenge, given that the expertise underpinning superintelligent systems cannot be contained within any single, confiscatable entity. Previous efforts to regulate advanced artificial intelligence, among them a broadly supported open letter in 2023, did not result in federal law, and the current proposal confronts an uncertain path through a politically fractured legislature.
