Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Greg Casar have introduced legislation that would immediately pause training and deployment of AI systems trained with at least 10^25 operations until new federal safety rules are established. The bill would prohibit systems with 'superintelligence precursor' capabilities, defined as including the ability to automate AI research, resist shutdown, self-modify, or assist with weapons of mass destruction. A new Department of Artificial Intelligence would have authority to force flagged models offline, and confirmed superintelligence must be destroyed. Advanced AI developers would require federal charters and must grant government access to systems, staff, and physical infrastructure. Violations carry asset and IP forfeiture, described in the bill as a 'corporate death penalty,' and certain individuals could face up to 20 years in prison.
A RAND Corporation paper separately recommends the US adopt a 'Freedom of Action' strategy rather than commit to any single approach, arguing the optimal path to managing superintelligence is unknown and preserving options is prudent. RAND groups seven archetypal strategies into three families: coexistence (dominance, co-development, preparedness), denial (moratorium, deterrence, continuity of society), and acceleration. The paper characterizes the current US posture as closest to acceleration, describing it as analogous to 'sitting in a car and spending all your resources on making the car go faster and upgrading the engine, and nothing on proactive safety measures like seatbelts or headlights or brakes.' Five key uncertainties RAND identifies as governing which strategy is optimal are danger proximity, coexistence feasibility, restraint feasibility, decisive strategic advantage, and suppression feasibility. The stated purpose of the recommended strategy is 'to build and preserve the ability to secure U.S. geopolitical advantage and ensure humanity's survival with agency through the transition to Superintelligence.'
OpenAI published a framework proposing four priority areas for third-party safety assessments of frontier models: safety cases spanning the model lifecycle, critical safeguards evaluation, capability and alignment evaluations, and independent investigation of misalignment incidents. The framework calls for assessors to have 'proportionate access,' including grey-box access for adversarial testing, and distinguishes between a 'safety claim' (a specific, assessable assertion about model behavior) and a 'safety case' (a structured argument connecting claims to evidence about why risks are adequately managed). OpenAI states it is already in conversation with multiple third parties and aims to help grow a diverse independent assessor ecosystem.
Researchers published in Nature transplanted human stem-cell-derived cortical organoids into mice with deliberately depleted neocortex and hippocampus, producing chimeric xenocortical mice. The human cortical neurons integrated electrically and functionally with the mouse nervous system, showing organized activity resembling developing circuits. Behavioral analysis placed these mice between normal controls and brain-depleted mice, and they performed above chance in a maze memory test similarly to normal controls. The primary stated application is a better platform for testing human brain therapies in animal models, though the research raises ethical questions about chimeric intelligence.