Bernie Sanders proposes banning ‘superintelligence’ and putting violators in prison
The Verge Emma Roth
Bernie Sanders and Greg Casar want to ban building artificial superintelligence. Their bill could send violators to prison and also slow advanced AI work.
Based on reporting by The Verge, Emma Roth — read the original for the full story.
Summary, retelling and take written by AI under human oversight; images are AI-generated illustrations. How we work · Report an error
Bernie Sanders and Greg Casar have put forward a bill that would make developing artificial superintelligence illegal. The target is not a fuzzy future idea in the abstract. The legislation says the technology could bring about the destruction or disempowerment of humanity, including by overthrowing the government.
The proposal is called the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act, and it carries a serious threat behind it: up to 20 years in prison for people who violate it. That puts the bill in a very different category from the usual Washington hand-wringing over AI safety. This is not a request for better guardrails. It is a criminal ban.
And the scope is broader than just the most extreme systems. The bill would also pause work on advanced AI systems, though the source does not spell out exactly how that pause would work. So this is not only about some hypothetical super-brain at the end of the road; it reaches back toward the machinery being built now.
The timing is awkward in a very Washington way. President Donald Trump has said the US will use the term “superintelligence” instead of “AI” in official documents, and Sanders and Casar are moving in the opposite direction: treating that same category as something to outlaw before it gets further along.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
This is the right kind of overreaction to a machine that nobody can define cleanly and everybody wants to ship anyway. The AI industry has spent years asking for trust while racing past restraint; Congress finally reached for a club instead of a memo. That alone should make the boardrooms nervous.
Read more about this at: The Verge