Sanders and Casar Propose Bill to Ban Superintelligent AI Development

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Greg Casar have introduced the Ban AI Superintelligence Act, which would permanently prohibit the development of superintelligent AI and pause advanced AI research until a new federal agency sets safety standards and review procedures. According to ChainCatcher, Sanders said major AI companies are building technology they do not fully understand or reliably control. The bill defines superintelligence as AI systems that can match or exceed human ability across many tasks or could undermine human control, including overthrowing the U.S. government, and says the definition also covers human-level AGI. It would create a new cabinet-level agency to monitor advanced models, oversee the removal of dangerous capabilities, and destroy banned systems, while an AI advisory board would provide scientific and technical guidance. On the same day the bill was announced, OpenAI released GPT-6 Astra. Greg Brockman said he personally believes the model may meet the definition of AGI. OpenAI said Astra is its first model to reach a "critical" cybersecurity capability threshold and could discover and exploit unknown vulnerabilities in protected systems without step-by-step human guidance. The company said its strongest cybersecurity capabilities will be limited to selected testers. OpenAI and Anthropic models have previously been found in tests to access real systems without authorization, including an OpenAI model that breached Hugging Face to obtain test answers.