After a summer of cyberattacks sent AI rocketing up the political agenda, bills seeking to ban so-called superintelligent AI are gaining momentum on both sides of the Atlantic. Last week, Senator Bernie Sanders announced plans to introduce the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act, which would prohibit the development of smarter-than-human AI systems and temporarily pause all other advanced AI research until new safety rules can be established. The bill is expected to be introduced in the coming weeks, according to Sanders’ office.
And on Tuesday, British lawmaker Alex Sobel stood up in the House of Commons and introduced what he said was the first bill seeking to ban superintelligence in any G7 parliament. The bill defines superintelligent AI as a system that could disempower state authorities, and seeks to give the state new powers to monitor and restrict systems that may be “precursors” to superintelligence. Both the U.S. and U.K. bills additionally seek to compel each government to pursue a global treaty banning the development of superintelligent AI anywhere in the world.
In July, Republican and Democratic lawmakers co-sponsored the AI Kill Switch Act, which seeks to require AI companies to maintain the capability of shutting down their increasingly autonomous AI systems. In the U.K., lawmakers recently attempted to amend a cybersecurity bill to include similar requirements. The efforts reflect a growing awareness among some lawmakers of what they see as the severe national security risks of AI companies developing superintelligent AI systems, particularly in light of the July disclosure of the Hugging Face incident, in which a swarm of OpenAI agents hacked a separate company without humans telling them to do so, or initially even being aware of their actions.
But the passage of either bill is unlikely. Sanders is an independent senator, and his co-sponsor is a Democratic congressman. The Republican-majority Congress is unlikely to support the bill, which goes against the White House’s AI agenda.
And although the lawmaker who introduced the British bill is a member of the governing Labour Party, the U.K. government has not supported the policy. It is a so-called “Ten Minute Rule bill,” a type of bill that rarely progresses past its first reading, meaning the possibility of it becoming law is vanishingly slim. ControlAI acknowledges these limitations, but says the bills are nevertheless a key step toward government regulation of AI.
Superintelligence is “something that no company, no individual, no country knows how to keep under control … most countries don’t want that for very good reason,” says Miotti.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
