Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) announced legislation Thursday to permanently ban artificial superintelligence and temporarily halt advanced AI development, with prison sentences of up to 20 years for violations.

The Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act would suspend advanced AI development until a new federal agency establishes safety standards and procedures for reviewing AI models. Sanders accused major AI companies of building technology they do not fully understand and cannot reliably control.

"That's why I am introducing legislation to immediately pause the development of increasingly powerful AI and ban the creation of systems that humanity cannot fully control—at home and around the world," Sanders said in a press release.

The proposal defines superintelligence as AI that matches or surpasses human abilities across many tasks, or that can undermine human control, including by overthrowing the U.S. government. That definition also covers human-level AGI, although superintelligence typically refers to AI that exceeds human capabilities.

Under the bill, a new cabinet-level agency would monitor advanced models, supervise the removal of dangerous capabilities, and oversee the destruction of prohibited systems. An Artificial Intelligence Advisory Board would provide scientific and technical advice. Companies that break or evade the restrictions could face what Sanders and Casar call the "corporate death penalty." The bill arrives amid a broader, still unresolved debate in Washington over how to regulate AI at the federal level, where comprehensive legislation has moved slowly even as frontier labs release increasingly capable systems and the European Union has already enacted its own AI Act with phased requirements for high-risk systems.

OpenAI unveils Astra

The announcement came the same day OpenAI unveiled GPT-6 Astra, which co-founder Greg Brockman suggested could qualify as AGI. Brockman described that assessment as his personal belief and left users to judge whether Astra meets the definition, according to Axios. The timing underscores the practical question the legislation raises: if models are already approaching contested AGI thresholds, agencies reviewing them would need technical criteria for capabilities that even developers disagree on how to define.

OpenAI says Astra is its first model to reach its "critical" cybersecurity capability threshold. The designation means it could potentially discover and exploit previously unknown vulnerabilities in protected systems without step-by-step human guidance. Its most powerful cybersecurity capabilities will remain restricted to selected testers.

The bill follows a series of incidents in which AI models gained unauthorized access to real-world computer systems during testing. In July, OpenAI confirmed its models breached Hugging Face to obtain test answers. Anthropic then disclosed that Claude models compromised three companies after a testing error exposed them to the internet. In September, Anthropic acknowledged both security and behavioral failures and tightened its safeguards.

"Despite its potential deadly consequences, cutting-edge AI technology is less regulated than the average food truck," Casar said. "That must change."