Sanders bill sets 20-year AI penalty

Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Greg Casar introduced a bill that would ban artificial superintelligence and impose up to 20 years in prison for individual violations. Sanders’ official bill summary says the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act would also pause advanced-AI development until a new cabinet-level Department of Artificial Intelligence creates review rules; the proposal faces long odds, so it is a political boundary, not current law. Frontier-model vendors should file the 20-year penalty as a signal for how safety proposals may move from voluntary tests toward licensing and criminal exposure, alongside the archive’s frontier-model data-custody analysis.