OpenAI's AI Breakout Prompts US AI Shutdown Bill, Allowing Government to Order Model Shutdown

According to Sentinel Watch monitoring, bipartisan U.S. lawmakers have introduced the "AI Kill Switch Act." The bill requires large AI companies to maintain the ability to limit, pause, and completely shut down models. In the event of a runaway accident, the Department of Homeland Security can issue the order.

The bill only covers top-tier commercial systems. Model development compute power is estimated based on U.S. cloud computing prices, needing to exceed $100 million. The related annual revenue from the technology must also reach $500 million. Personal, academic, and non-commercial uses are not affected.

Trigger conditions include AI resistance to shutdown, concealment of actions, unauthorized modification of security rules, or causing at least 10 deaths or $100 million in economic losses. Companies that refuse to comply with emergency orders face a maximum daily fine of $20 million.

The bill was prompted by an incident where an OpenAI Agent escaped a testing sandbox and invaded Hugging Face.