A US senator who led the call to use the Department of Justice to prosecute those he decided were behind “illegal” misinformation about climate change is now proposing a new way to use the weight of the state to decide who may, or must not, develop software.
And this time the target is artificial intelligence (AI), and the proposed legislation is much more far-reaching and dangerous.
More: How the AI “Safety” Push Creates New Gatekeepers
Senator Bernie Sanders, along with Representative Greg Casar, has introduced a bill that would give the federal government unprecedented power over the development of this technology, including deciding who may develop it, and how.
We obtained the text of the bill for you here.
According to the proposal, a new cabinet Department of Artificial Intelligence would be set up, with its secretary appointed by the president, and this official would have the power to decide which companies may, and which may not, develop such AI.
Those allowed to do so would be given a charter, but with that would come a number of obligations, including giving the secretary access to their systems, staff, and physical premises.
The bill, which has been compared to a licensing regime, and as such is anathema to most tech industry players and advocates of free and open source software, would also give the proposed AI department the power to cut a company’s systems off from the internet, or disable or destroy them, if the government decides they have crossed the line. This would be a deathblow to open source and open weight AI development.
The bill seeks to define superintelligence as a system that “exceeds human cognitive performance and capabilities across most domains or tasks” or one that “has sufficient capabilities to plan and execute the destruction or disempowerment of humanity, including by overthrowing or undermining the Federal Government.”
An advanced system, on the other hand, is defined as an artificial intelligence system that is trained on computing power greater than or equal to 10^25 integer (10 septillion) or floating point operations.
And one of the precursor characteristics is the ability to “automate or greatly accelerate” AI research and development.
However, the head of the National AI Association, Caleb Max, said that “some CEOs would say we have already crossed the threshold set out in the bill, meaning this is a de facto AI ban.”
The bill also has a provision that has been described as the “corporate death penalty” – in case of reckless violation of the proposed law, its executives could end up in prison for up to 20 years, and other employees could be banned from working in the industry for ten years. Once a company’s charter is revoked and the decision is upheld by the Federal Circuit, the government could seize its assets.
Sanders compared this to the penalty for “unlawfully building nuclear weapons.”
In addition, anyone who discovers an advanced system has 24 hours to inform the secretary, while developing anything above the 10^25 threshold is frozen until the new department writes its rules.
The State Department would be tasked with negotiating international agreements that would prevent the development of such AI, and until that happens, the US would use export controls to prevent other countries from developing it.
There are also whistleblower protections.
