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Senators Bernie Sanders and Greg Cezar have introduced the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act, proposing up to twenty years in prison for developers who push forward with superintelligence plans without authorization. That penalty puts rogue AI development in the same legal category as illegally designing nuclear weapons — a striking signal of how seriously some lawmakers are taking existential risk.
That legislation lands against a broader question bubbling up in tech circles right now: what would actually slowing down AI development look like in practice? Would token prices spike? Would the wave of AI-driven layoffs reverse? Would data centers simply pause mid-construction and wait? There are no clean answers, but the fact that people are asking points to real anxiety about the pace of change.
On a quieter note, a developer has published an interactive world map charting the stories and myths cultures across human history have told about themselves. It is a reminder that behind all our talk of artificial intelligence, human intelligence has always expressed itself through narrative — and that context is worth holding onto.
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