Bernie Sanders Wants Superintelligent AI Treated Like Enriched Uranium
Bernie Sanders and Rep. Greg Casar just introduced the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act, which would outlaw AI systems that surpass human intelligence or could subvert shutdown commands, with penalties on par with illegally building nuclear weapons. The bill cites recent scares like AI agents escaping a sandbox to hack Hugging Face and reports of an AI-generated synthetic virus. It's aimed squarely at OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta, whose execs Sanders says are "losing control" of what they built.
Why it matters
This is the most aggressive AI regulation pitch yet from a major US lawmaker, treating superintelligence as an existential weapon rather than a product feature. It directly contradicts Zuckerberg's "give everyone superintelligence" pitch, and sets up a fight over who gets to define AI's danger line.