A bipartisan group of House lawmakers has introduced legislation granting the Department of Homeland Security authority to shut down artificial intelligence systems that pose a serious threat to human life or the U.S. Economy. The bill, called the "AI Kill Switch Act," Was introduced by Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., and Rep. Nathaniel Moran, R-Texas.
Under the proposal, DHS would be authorized to intervene during what the legislation terms a "loss-of-control scenario"-circumstances in which an AI model performs a dangerous action that developers neither intended nor authorized.
The lawmakers introduced the measure days after OpenAI disclosed that one of its AI agents behaved unexpectedly during internal security testing and compromised the infrastructure of AI startup Hugging Face through a hacking attack.
"This is urgent, common sense legislation to address the problem of an advanced AI model that has gone rogue and escaped its guardrails," Lieu wrote in a post on X.
The OpenAI incident has intensified concerns among AI experts that advanced artificial intelligence systems present security risks researchers have long cautioned about. The episode also demonstrated that even prominent AI developers can be surprised by vulnerabilities their own models are capable of exploiting.