Sanders and Casar Push for Pause on Artificial Superintelligence Development

Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Greg Casar have called for a halt to the development of artificial superintelligence, citing safety concerns. They've focused on artificial general intelligence (AGI) and artificial superintelligence (ASI), which refer to AI systems that can perform any cognitive task a human can across any domain, and those that would outperform humans at essentially everything cognitive.

No legislation titled the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act has been formally introduced yet. However, in August 2026, Casar declared AI safety an 'emergency' and called for congressional hearings where AI executives would be put under oath. This was followed by a letter from Sanders to the CEOs of OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta, demanding they pause their frontier AI development.

Sanders has proposed several bills related to AI regulation, including the American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act, which would impose a 50% tax on major AI companies and funnel the proceeds into a public fund. He has also teamed up with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to introduce the AI Data Center Moratorium Act, which would freeze new data center construction until safety standards are established.