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Hill progressives are rolling out new legislation to ban “AI superintelligence,” or AI that exceeds human capabilities. They see it as a top priority for Congress and for potential Democratic presidential candidates.
“There’s a sense of urgency. Candidates have got to start talking about it now. They’ve got to talk about it in ’28, and we have to act immediately when Congress returns,” Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., told reporters on Wednesday.
Both he and lead House sponsor Rep. Greg Casar, D-Texas, are pushing for immediate action on the legislation, which in addition to banning superintelligence would ban “recursive self-improvement” and stand up a new Cabinet-level agency to oversee AI.
Casar said Congress needs to aim bigger with this than with previous proposals in a post-Hugging Face incident environment: “We need to throw out these proposals that would not actually address the scale of the problems.”
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Although it’s unlikely for Congress to act on AI in the lame-duck session, Democrats will have to untangle a host of competing proposals next Congress if they win control of the House or Senate this fall.
Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., also plans to introduce his own AI bill on Thursday, his office told Semafor. The bill creates a fund, which tech companies would pay into, to support workforce development for Americans as AI changes the economy.
And that’s on top of pent-up demand from the Democratic base for action on other priorities that have animated primaries this cycle, like restricting aid to Israel or investigating the president.
Ashley Gold contributed reporting.