Sanders' bill would make 'superintelligent' AI a crime with 20-year prison terms
Sanders and Rep. Greg Casar would criminalize AI that matches or exceeds human cognition across broad domains, with 20-year prison terms and the corporate death penalty. The bill also pauses frontier development until a new cabinet-level agency writes rules. Critics note the vague definition could sweep in capable open-weight models, the very systems many see as a safeguard against closed labs. Penalties echo those for building nuclear weapons illegally.