Sanders and Casar introduce ban on artificial superintelligence
Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Greg Casar unveiled the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act on Wednesday. The bill would permanently outlaw systems that exceed human cognitive ability or could disempower humanity, pause advanced AI development until a new cabinet-level Department of Artificial Intelligence writes safety rules, require federal approval before advanced systems deploy, and authorize penalties of up to 20 years in prison. Several AI company employees endorsed it; passage faces long odds in the Republican-controlled Congress.
AI-assisted · US Brief desk · Sources listed below
What happened
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) introduced the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act on Wednesday, a progressive push to hard-stop the most advanced AI systems as Trump hosts Xi Jinping and midterm politics heat up around technology and jobs.
The bill permanently prohibits developing or deploying artificial superintelligence, which AP and Sanders’s office define as a system that exceeds human cognitive performance across most domains or has enough capability to destroy or disempower humanity, including by overthrowing the federal government.
It also pauses development of the most advanced AI systems until a new cabinet-level Department of Artificial Intelligence is staffed and issues safety rules, monitoring, audits, and pre-deployment approvals. After those rules exist, advanced systems would still need federal sign-off before public release.
More context
Enforcement language in the framework Sanders released allows significant penalties, including up to 20 years in prison for some individual violations, plus corporate sanctions for developing, funding, importing, or transferring banned systems or foreseeable precursors.
Several current employees at leading AI labs endorsed the measure in personal capacity, according to statements shared with AP—including an OpenAI Safety Systems researcher and a Google DeepMind engineer who said they were not speaking for their employers. Industry CEOs are not listed as sponsors.
Congress has so far done little on frontier AI rules. President Trump has resisted tighter oversight even as Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and xAI’s Elon Musk have publicly warned about catastrophic risk. On Tuesday at the U.N., Trump said artificial intelligence would be renamed “super intelligence,” a remark Sanders said showed little grasp of the safety debate.
Casar chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus; the bill is also a midterm and 2028 positioning document. Maryland Gov. Wes Moore floated state AI rules Tuesday, and California Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed an executive order to speed independent oversight under state law—parallel tracks while federal action stalls.
Critics of a U.S.-only pause argue China would keep racing. Sanders compared the challenge to Cold War nuclear arms control and said Washington should negotiate with Beijing on a joint pause and ASI ban—language that overlaps with AI-safety talk expected during this week’s Trump–Xi meetings, even if a deal remains unlikely.
US Brief’s takeaway: treat the bill as a clear progressive marker and industry-insider endorsement story, not as imminent law. Watch whether Republicans introduce narrower alternatives and whether Trump–Xi AI dialogue language softens or hardens the export-control fight.
4 listed sources
- Associated Press via ABC News, Joey Cappelletti, Sep 23, 2026
- Sen. Bernie Sanders press release: Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act, Sep 23, 2026
- Sanders Senate one-pager and section-by-section summary, Sep 23, 2026
- Fox Business summary of bill framework and penalties, Sep 23, 2026
References listed by US Brief; a source count is not a verification score.
Editorial sourcing notes
Bill text and quotes follow the Associated Press account and Sanders’s Senate press materials released Sep 23, 2026. Endorsements from named company employees are personal statements; employers have not adopted the bill. Political odds of passage remain low in a Republican-controlled Congress.
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