A sitting United States senator wants to make it illegal to build a machine smarter than every human on Earth combined.
Quick Take
- Senator Bernie Sanders introduced the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act in September 2026, aiming to permanently stop development of AI systems that exceed human intelligence.
- More than 700 people, including Nobel laureates and celebrities like Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, signed a public letter demanding the same kind of ban.
- Supporters say no company should build superintelligence until scientists broadly agree it is safe and the public actually consents.
- Critics, including a leading tech policy group and AI researcher Gary Marcus, say a ban is unenforceable, poorly defined, and could push dangerous research underground.
A Senator Draws a Line Congress Has Never Drawn Before
Senator Sanders, joined by Representative Greg Casar, introduced legislation that would permanently stop the development of any AI system that surpasses human intelligence. The bill also calls for a temporary pause on advanced AI systems more broadly, until a federal regulator sets real safety rules first. That pairing matters. It is not just a warning shot. It is an attempt to write a hard stop into federal law before the technology fully arrives.
Casar has pointed to a recent string of AI-powered cyberattacks as proof the danger is not hypothetical. That argument will resonate with anyone who has watched scams, deepfakes, and automated hacking tools grow more convincing by the month. But a cyberattack carried out with today’s AI tools is a different animal than a hypothetical superintelligent system escaping human control. The bill leans on the second fear to justify action against the first.
The Movement Behind the Statement
The push did not start in Congress. It started with the Future of Life Institute, a nonprofit that published a statement calling for a prohibition on superintelligence “not lifted before there is broad scientific consensus that it will be done safely and controllably” and “strong public buy-in”. That is a specific bar, not a vague plea for caution. More than 700 signatories backed it, spanning tech veterans, policymakers, and public figures.
That coalition is unusually wide, and that is both its strength and its weakness. When Nobel laureates, Steve Bannon, and Prince Harry and Meghan Markle all sign the same document, it proves the fear crosses political lines. It also gives skeptics an easy line of attack: dismiss the whole effort as a celebrity cause rather than a serious technical debate grounded in evidence.
The Case Against a Ban
The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a tech policy think tank, called the ban push speculation dressed up as policy. The group argued that prohibiting advanced AI “would not make the United States safer” but would instead “halt scientific progress, weaken economic and national security,” and recommended incident monitoring and audits instead of an outright ban. AI researcher Gary Marcus took a similar position, arguing systems should only move forward once developers can prove to an independent authority that real safeguards exist, rather than freezing progress altogether.
That distinction, between banning outright and demanding proof of safety first, is where this fight will actually be decided. A total ban sounds decisive, but nobody has defined where “advanced AI” ends and “superintelligence” begins, and no country can enforce a prohibition its rivals ignore.
Sources:
time.com, nextgov.com, fedscoop.com, superintelligence-statement.org, futureoflife.org, en.wikipedia.org
