In July, after an autonomous OpenAI model escaped testing sandboxes and notoriously breached ML platform Hugging Face, two US Congressmen, Democrat Ted Lieu of California and Republican Nathaniel Moran of Texas, introduced the AI Kill Switch Act. The bill, if passed, would give the US federal government the power to order companies to slow down, suspend or shut down advanced AI systems, and the issue jumped from fiction to legislation. Suddenly, the 'kill switch' of gone-rogue computer HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey has become real.
To become law, the bipartisan bill will need to be approved by the House of Representatives, debated and passed in the US senate, and signed into law by the president. If and when passed, regulatory bodies will have the authority to call for an immediate shutdown if any model exhibits 'catastrophic risks'.
