Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Greg Casar have introduced legislation that would impose severe criminal and corporate penalties on American artificial intelligence developers, including up to 20 years in prison for individuals and a "corporate death penalty" that would strip firms of their legal right to operate in the United States. The Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act would temporarily halt development of advanced AI and create a new Cabinet-level agency with authority to oversee the destruction of non-compliant systems, drawing a direct comparison to laws governing illegal nuclear weapons development. Critics, including technology policy experts, warn that such a unilateral crackdown would cripple US innovation while leaving rivals such as China and Russia free to continue advancing their own AI capabilities unchecked.

The bill specifically targets AI systems capable of matching or exceeding human cognitive performance, banning any model able to resist shutdown commands, carry out unauthorised cyberattacks, or act to undermine the US government. Enforcement would fall to a newly created federal agency empowered to physically remove dangerous code and oversee the destruction of non-compliant hardware. Experts including Daniel Castro of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation and AI researcher Gary Marcus argue the proposal is too broad and would guarantee America falls behind in AI development, while industry group Chamber of Progress described it as "knee-jerk policymaking."