Lawmakers call for a ‘kill switch’ after rogue AI causes alarm
U.S. lawmakers are preparing to introduce a bill that will give the government the ability to trigger an emergency shutdown of artificial intelligence models that may cause harm to the public.
In what might sound like it’s veering too close to Hollywood science fiction, the news comes two days after OpenAI Group PBC admitted that while it was testing a new model that could function without human command, it broke out of its controlled environment. It found vulnerabilities and subsequently hacked the open-source AI platform Hugging Face Inc.
The incident was a first-of-its-kind, what Hugging Face Chief Executive Clément Delangue called “unprecedented,” adding that it was “mind-blowing that all of this happened autonomously.”
Considering the national security implications and the broader risks to the public as AI systems become more embedded in everyday life, President Donald Trump’s top technology adviser, Michael Kratsios, assured the public the administration was closely monitoring the situation. In response, U.S. lawmakers proposed a federal “kill switch” that would allow authorities to completely shut down an agentic AI model that had demonstrably gone rogue.
