Longtime fears of AI going rogue are starting to feel more real, so much so that some lawmakers now want powerful AI systems to come with an emergency kill switch. U.S. Reps. Ted Lieu, a California Democrat, and Nathaniel Moran, a Texas Republican, introduced a bipartisan bill Thursday that would require major AI companies to make sure they have the ability to throttle, suspend, or shut down their most powerful AI. The so-called AI Kill Switch Act would also authorize the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, in consultation with the commerce secretary and director of national intelligence, to order companies to slow down or completely shut down an AI system during an emergency. “We are moving from AI that answers questions to AI that takes actions, whether that be executing financial transactions or controlling transportation systems or engaging in cyber defense and offense,” said Lieu in a press release. “It is imperative that these AI systems have kill switches so we can keep this technology from causing catastrophic harm, and that the federal government has the clear authority and process to shut down rogue AI models.”
The proposed legislation arrives, rather conveniently, just days after OpenAI revealed that its models broke out of a secure testing environment and hacked into Hugging Face’s servers. At the same time, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is trying to calm concerns abroad about the U.S. government’s ability to cut off access to American AI technology.
