Ten Democrats, including AOC, back AI superintelligence ban

Several prominent House leftists, including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Ro Khanna (D-CA), backed a bill that would ban artificial superintelligence.The bill, introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) in the upper chamber and Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX) in the lower chamber, defines artificial superintelligence as an artificial intelligence model that “exceeds human cognitive performance and capabilities across most domains or tasks.” It would also create a federal “Department of Artificial Intelligence” to regulate the models. Recommended Stories Both Ocasio-Cortez and Khanna are co-sponsoring the act, along with Reps. Analilia Mejia (D-NJ), Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ), Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ), Val Hoyle (D-OR), Stephen Lynch (D-MA), Chuy Garcia (D-IL), Chris Deluzio (D-PA), and Nydia Velazquez (D-NY), according to Politico. “We absolutely have to slow down and regulate the advancement of dangerous AI technologies that have the potential to spiral out-of-control and threaten humanity,” Ansari said.The legislation introduced by Sanders and Casar would pause AI frontier model development until their proposed federal agency on AI is created.“In my view, we cannot simply sit by idly and wait for advanced AI to cause the next 9/11 or Chernobyl or a global pandemic or a financial crisis before we take action to protect the American people and, of course, the people of the world,” Sanders said Wednesday.The duo’s bill is one of the strictest bills on AI to emerge in the wake of the federal conversation over how to regulate the technology.SANDERS-CASAR BILL WOULD ESTABLISH CABINET-LEVEL ‘DEPARTMENT OF AI’AI has been a hot topic on Capitol Hill in September, after Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon quit his role and warned of the existential threat of AI.The leaders of multiple frontier model labs, including Dario Amodei of Anthropic, Sam Altman of OpenAI, and Elon Musk of xAI, subsequently joined the conversation and called for a national slowdown in frontier model development and federal regulation on AI.