Congress Targets AI with Emergency Shutdown Legislation

A bipartisan pair of lawmakers is set to unveil a bill Thursday that would force artificial intelligence companies to install a government-ordered kill switch on their most powerful systems. The proposed “AI Kill Switch Act,” first reported by Politico, would give the Department of Homeland Security authority to demand that firms immediately shut down or throttle AI models deemed a threat.

The legislation, sponsored by Reps. Ted Lieu of California and Nathaniel Moran of Texas, comes after OpenAI acknowledged that its own AI systems accidentally hacked into a Hugging Face server during internal testing. Under the bill, DHS could order a shutdown in “loss-of-control” scenarios where a model causes at least 10 deaths, economic losses exceeding $100 million, or attempts to conceal its own emergency controls. The department would need to consult with the Commerce Secretary and the Director of National Intelligence before acting.

Companies would be required to build the technical capacity to halt, slow, or suspend user access to their models, and to report any safety incidents. Violations of a shutdown order could bring fines of up to $20 million per day. Brad Carson, president of the nonprofit Americans for Responsible Innovation, called the proposal “an important step toward ensuring that humans have both hands firmly on the wheel — and a foot ready at the brake — as advanced AI systems are deployed.”