A US senator proposed making superintelligent AI a crime carrying 20 years
The penalty the bill proposes for building a superintelligent AI is up to 20 years in prison. The sponsors picked that number because it is the penalty for unlawfully developing a nuclear weapon.
Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Greg Casar announced the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act on 3 September. It would permanently prohibit systems that surpass human intelligence, that could overthrow a government, or that can subvert a shutdown command. It would pause advanced AI development entirely until a new federal regulator writes safety rules, and would stand up a cabinet level agency with an advisory board to enforce the ban. Individuals face up to 20 years. Companies face dissolution, which the sponsors call the corporate death penalty.
Why this one is different
Almost every AI bill so far has concerned disclosure, training data, or the use of models in hiring, housing and policing. This one proposes to make a direction of research illegal. It is the first time a prominent American politician has asked for a prohibition rather than rules, and it arrived on the same day OpenAI released a model its own president said may eventually be seen as the arrival of general intelligence.
Cutting edge AI technology is less regulated than the average food truck.
How we got here
- 16 Jul 2026The European Commission orders Google to open Android to rival AI assistants under the Digital Markets Act. Regulation of conduct, not of capability.
- 26 Aug 2026Meta agrees to pay up to $17.1bn over child safety, the largest settlement in the industry's history. Still conduct.
- 2 Sep 2026The US Justice Department files a statement of interest backing OpenAI against the New York Times, arguing training on copyrighted text is fair use.
- 3 Sep 2026OpenAI ships GPT-6 Astra and its president says it may eventually be seen as the arrival of AGI.
- 3 Sep 2026Sanders and Casar propose banning that outcome outright, with a 20 year sentence attached.
What it does and does not mean
The bill has not been introduced, and it defines superintelligence in words rather than in anything testable. Systems that surpass human intelligence, or could overthrow a government: no compute figure, no capability score, no evaluation is named, so as described there is no procedure by which a company could establish whether it had broken the law. A prohibition that cannot be measured cannot be enforced, and that gap is the first thing any committee will find. What it does show is a change in what can be said out loud in Congress. The argument used to be how to regulate deployment. This is a proposal to prohibit a destination, made in the same week the executive branch filed in court on the industry's side.

