Sanders and Casar introduce a superintelligence ban; OpenAI opens Daybreak cyber access to Ukraine

What happened

Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Greg Casar introduced legislation to permanently ban artificial superintelligence, pause the most advanced AI development until federal rules exist, and create a Department of Artificial Intelligence Advanced systems would then need federal approval before deployment, with penalties of up to 20 years in prison in some cases; employees of OpenAI and Google DeepMind endorsed it in a personal capacity and the bill faces long odds in the Republican-controlled Congress. (AP via ABC News)
OpenAI is extending its Daybreak cyber-defense program to Ukraine's government to help protect civilian infrastructure, the first active conflict zone to receive that level of access It will work with Ukraine's Ministry of Digital Transformation to find software vulnerabilities and test fixes faster, and announced it on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. (OpenAI, AI Weekly)
Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Greg Casar unveiled legislation that would permanently prohibit artificial superintelligence, temporarily pause development of the most advanced AI systems until a new Department of Artificial Intelligence sets federal safety rules, and require federal approval before advanced systems are deployed. Violations could carry up to 20 years in prison in some cases; an OpenAI Safety Systems researcher and a Google DeepMind engineer (speaking for themselves) endorsed it. The bill faces long odds in a Republican-controlled Congress; Sanders told AP "it doesn't take a genius to say, 'slow it down.'" (Associated Press via Durango Herald)
Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Greg Casar's own release for the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act sets a "corporate death penalty" for violating entities, up to 20 years in prison for individuals, a ban on any AI capable of "overthrowing the federal government," and a US policy to pursue international agreements and export controls against superintelligence anywhere in the world. No Congress.gov bill number had been indexed as of this afternoon. (Sen. Bernie Sanders, primary)
Father Paolo Benanti, the priest who advises the Vatican on AI, told WIRED that frontier labs invoking existential risk function as a "cartel" narrative that excludes the public from AI governance — "when a small group of companies dictates the rules under which an industry operates, this has a really clear name: a cartel." (WIRED)
OpenAI's Sam Altman and Anthropic's Dario Amodei told the UN Security Council, in its first meeting devoted specifically to AI slipping beyond human control, that AI's risks are serious and that its biggest decisions cannot be left to the labs alone — Amodei: "If managed poorly, I even believe that AI could be a risk to humanity as a whole"; Altman: "If AI is to be democratic, the most important decisions cannot be made by labs in San Francisco alone. They must be shaped through democratic processes and by governments accountable to the people they serve." Altman, briefing in person, also said the current moment "calls for extreme care" since an increasingly automated development process could let AI's pace of improvement "accelerate rapidly," and repeated that "the industry must not accept too much technological risk just because the benefits are too great and important to slow down" — an endorsement of the pacing proposal Amodei made in mid-September. Amodei and Hugging Face's Clément Delangue briefed remotely; French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot chaired; Council members including the US and China were expected to speak after the briefers. No Council product (resolution or statement) had emerged as of this writing, and wire coverage had not confirmed whether DeepSeek and Moonshot, both reported invited, actually spoke. (Reuters, primary, via Yahoo Finance, AFP, primary, via Le Figaro)
Yoshua Bengio, co-chair of the UN's Independent International Scientific Panel on AI, told the same Security Council session "the dangers are real and imminent," calling AI loss-of-control "an unprecedented threat, one that none of its members would choose, that none can contain alone, and that does not respect the borders we defend." (Reuters, primary, via Yahoo Finance)
At the Security Council, White House science adviser Michael Kratsios said the United States "totally rejects any attempt to construct a globalist scheme of control of superintelligence," while Latvia said it will keep pressing for an informal Council expert group on AI The UN's transcript lists Bengio, Altman, Amodei and Delangue as the four briefers and never mentions DeepSeek or Moonshot; the Council adopted no resolution or statement, and Russia questioned whether the topic belongs in the Council at all. (UN transcript, automatic and unofficial, UN Meetings Coverage SC/16462, Security Council Report)
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Fox News that reports he would likely become Trump's AI czar are "probably fake news." WIRED reported the same day that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and White House officials Michael Kratsios and Sean Cairncross are also in the mix for the post, that former czar David Sacks is not, and that it is unclear whether the pick would keep their current job; Semafor had reported Bessent as a frontrunner on 09-22. (Reuters via Devdiscourse, WIRED)
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said AI companies should not get exemptions from antitrust or product-liability law, in a New York Times podcast with Ezra Klein released Wednesday — "when you're asking for regulation, don't ask for relief of the current ones," he said, a reference to Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's essay calling for an antitrust waiver so labs can coordinate on safety; he also said he would add rules for specific AI products such as robotaxis. The Reuters report notes Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said AI firms asked for liability shields without naming any. (Reuters, via Yahoo)
The State Department told diplomats in its international organizations bureau to replace "artificial intelligence" with "super intelligence" in all documents and positions, following President Trump's UN General Assembly remarks — an email sent Tuesday by deputy assistant secretary Michael Drager, titled "Change in Nomenclature AI to SI," said the department "will be using 'SI' in all remarks, positions and press elements moving forward"; AP, which obtained it Wednesday, could not confirm whether other bureaus would follow, and noted it would likely turn Trump's "AI Force" into an "SI Force." (AP, via AsiaOne)
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg opened the Connect keynote by setting Meta against rivals' calls for a coordinated slowdown, saying "the path to a safe future is to distribute this technology widely and create the right checks and balances, rather than concentrating it in the hands of just a few" — he called Meta's Muse agent the "centerpiece" of its optimistic vision; the report describes Meta as arguing that individual labs can and should make their own technology safe. (TBS News, from AP)
Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek signed Executive Order 26-26 on Wednesday, directing the state's chief information officer to draft third-party safety-review criteria for frontier AI models and assess whether they should be required to have a kill switch before state agencies can buy them The order took effect immediately, the officer has 90 days to return an implementation proposal, and Kotek said states must act because adequate federal safeguards are not in place. (KTVZ, Hoodline)
Sens. Michael Bennet and Peter Welch released a proposal for an independent federal commission to regulate frontier AI models and social media platforms, building on their Digital Platform Commission Act Bennet described a five-member commission with "clear pre-clearance for these frontier models before they escape from these companies," fines of as much as a third of trailing revenue for companies that refuse transparency, and the power to pause releases that pose catastrophic risk (his release quotes Politico's account of that pause power); Broadband Breakfast reported the two were reviving their earlier digital-regulator bill. (Sen. Bennet's office, Broadband Breakfast)

The Projection

Sanders and Casar introduce a superintelligence ban; OpenAI opens Daybreak cyber access to Ukraine

What happened

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