AI Policy Heats Up: The "Pacing the Frontier" Letter and the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act

July 28: AI workers ask for a "pacing" option

A week after OpenAI disclosed the Hugging Face agent attack, employees of OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind and Meta published "Pacing the Frontier." Its core request, verbatim:

"We request that the U.S. government support an international effort to develop the technical and governance tools needed to deliberately pace the frontier of automated AI development."

The letter does not ask for a pause. It asks that the option to pace development exist. More than 1,100 people signed at launch. The statement's website now shows 1,386 signatories. Reported signatories include Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI chief scientist Jakub Pachocki.

September 23: the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) introduced the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act. According to their offices and NBC News coverage, the 19-page bill would:

  • permanently ban developing and deploying superintelligent AI, defined as systems with cognitive abilities superior to humans;
  • pause advanced AI development until a new Cabinet-level Department of Artificial Intelligence sets safety rules;
  • impose a "corporate death penalty" and up to 20 years in prison for violations, which Sanders compared to the penalty for unlawfully building nuclear weapons;
  • direct the US to pursue international agreements against superintelligence development.

Not everyone backs it. AI researcher Gary Marcus, a long-time critic of the industry, published a post explaining why he opposes the bill.

Australia

After the Medicare portal breach, Australia's Senate has summoned the CEOs of OpenAI and Anthropic to its AI inquiry (see our incident timeline).

What to watch

The bill has been introduced; it has not passed. Whether it gains traction in Congress, or whether the industry's own "pacing" proposal moves forward, will shape the next round of frontier releases.

Sources

This article was drafted with AI assistance and checked against the sources above.