--- title: Geoffrey Hinton gave Congress a one-year deadline on AI... description: Geoffrey Hinton warned Congress in a closed Senate briefing convened by Senator Bernie Sanders that lawmakers have roughly a year to establish meaningful AI... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/geoffrey-hinton-gave-congress-a-one-year-deadline-on-ai-regulation-nothing-happened--g4g4f0gaj twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Geoffrey Hinton gave Congress a one-year deadline on AI regulation. Nothing happened. | daily.dev og:description: Geoffrey Hinton warned Congress in a closed Senate briefing convened by Senator Bernie Sanders that lawmakers have roughly a year to establish meaningful AI... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/geoffrey-hinton-gave-congress-a-one-year-deadline-on-ai-regulation-nothing-happened--g4g4f0gaj og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/G4g4F0gaj.png og:image:alt: Geoffrey Hinton gave Congress a one-year deadline on AI regulation. Nothing happened. og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Geoffrey Hinton gave Congress a one-year deadline on AI regulation. Nothing happened. **[Collections](https://daily.dev/sources/collections)** · 2 min read · 1 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Geoffrey Hinton warned Congress in a closed Senate briefing convened by Senator Bernie Sanders that lawmakers have roughly a year to establish meaningful AI guardrails before the technology becomes hard to control. Hinton, alongside Max Tegmark and Ajeya Cotra, pointed to a recent OpenAI/Hugging Face security breach as a warning sign and called for mandatory safety testing and compute spending on safety at frontier labs. No AI company representatives attended. Since the briefing, legislative action has stalled: the AI Emergency Button Act was blocked by Senator Rand Paul the same day it was introduced, the AI Kill Switch Act remains stalled, and a proposed Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act has not been formally introduced. ## Content ## The legislation Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Greg Casar introduced the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act, which would permanently ban artificial superintelligence in the US and pause development of any advanced AI system trained on 10²⁵ or more operations. The bill would also create a new Department of Artificial Intelligence to oversee charters for AI companies. The penalties are steep: individuals could face up to 20 years in prison, and companies could face a "corporate death penalty" — loss of charter, IP, and assets. Some employees at OpenAI and Google DeepMind have voiced support. The bill faces long odds. Republicans control Congress, and the Trump administration has pushed for more AI development, not less. ## Hinton's warning Around the same time, Geoffrey Hinton — Nobel Prize winner and the person most people call the "godfather of AI" — told a closed Senate briefing convened by Sanders that Congress has roughly a year to establish guardrails before the window closes. He cited the OpenAI-Hugging Face security breach as a "little Chernobyl" and warned that AI is now designing better AI, which accelerates the timeline considerably. Hinton presented alongside Max Tegmark and Ajeya Cotra. No major AI company representatives attended. His proposed fixes aren't radical: require large frontier labs to spend compute on safety research, and mandate safety testing and disclosure before releasing powerful models. He's been saying a version of this since 2023 — "these things will get to be much smarter than us and will take over" — but the urgency has sharpened. ## Where other bills stand The same day as the briefing, Senator John Kennedy's AI Emergency Button Act, which would require a mandatory shutdown mechanism for advanced models, was blocked by Senator Rand Paul's objection. The AI Kill Switch Act remains stalled. The Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act itself hadn't been formally introduced as of the briefing. So: one Nobel laureate saying the clock is ticking, a handful of bills going nowhere, and the dominant political current running in the opposite direction. ## Questions this post answers ### What did Geoffrey Hinton tell Congress about the timeline for AI regulation? Geoffrey Hinton told a closed Senate briefing, convened by Senator Bernie Sanders, that Congress has roughly a year to establish meaningful AI guardrails before things become genuinely hard to control. He appeared alongside AI safety researcher Max Tegmark and Ajeya Cotra from Open Philanthropy, warning that AI is now designing better AI in an accelerating feedback loop. _Developers tracking AI policy shifts follow debates like this one on daily.dev._ ### What happened to the AI Emergency Button Act in the Senate? Senator John Kennedy introduced the AI Emergency Button Act, which would require a shutdown mechanism for advanced AI models, but Senator Rand Paul objected and blocked it the same day it was introduced. The related AI Kill Switch Act remains stalled, and a proposed Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act has not even been formally introduced. _Anyone weighing how AI governance might affect their work can follow this story on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Congress has three AI bills and no timetable for a vote on any of them](https://daily.dev/posts/congress-has-three-ai-bills-and-no-timetable-for-a-vote-on-any-of-them-fnslyffls) · The Next Web · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Ro Khanna plans a bill to ban self-improving AI, CNBC reports](https://daily.dev/posts/ro-khanna-plans-a-bill-to-ban-self-improving-ai-cnbc-reports-prnyqyuyc) · The Next Web · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [AI 2040: Plan A](https://daily.dev/posts/ai-2040-plan-a-xqxvttovi) · Hacker News · 3 upvotes · 1 comments - [Anthropic backs urgent call for the most powerful AI labs to hit the brakes](https://daily.dev/posts/anthropic-backs-urgent-call-for-the-most-powerful-ai-labs-to-hit-the-brakes-tgay0ejok) · The New Stack · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#ai](https://daily.dev/tags/ai), [#ai-safety](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-safety), [#ai-regulation](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-regulation) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/geoffrey-hinton-gave-congress-a-one-year-deadline-on-ai-regulation-nothing-happened--g4g4f0gaj) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Geoffrey Hinton gave Congress a one-year deadline on AI regulation. Nothing happened.","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/geoffrey-hinton-gave-congress-a-one-year-deadline-on-ai-regulation-nothing-happened--g4g4f0gaj","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/geoffrey-hinton-gave-congress-a-one-year-deadline-on-ai-regulation-nothing-happened--g4g4f0gaj"},"datePublished":"2026-09-18T18:12:03.615Z","dateModified":"2026-09-25T13:02:17.174Z","description":"Geoffrey Hinton warned Congress in a closed Senate briefing convened by Senator Bernie Sanders that lawmakers have roughly a year to establish meaningful AI...","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Collections","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Collections","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--fk_6ycEi--/f_auto,q_auto/v1780996001/logos/collections?_a=BAMAMiWQ0","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/collections"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/geoffrey-hinton-gave-congress-a-one-year-deadline-on-ai-regulation-nothing-happened--g4g4f0gaj","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":1},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"ai,ai-safety,ai-regulation","timeRequired":"PT2M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Collections","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/collections"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Geoffrey Hinton gave Congress a one-year deadline on AI regulation. Nothing happened."}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/geoffrey-hinton-gave-congress-a-one-year-deadline-on-ai-regulation-nothing-happened--g4g4f0gaj#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"What did Geoffrey Hinton tell Congress about the timeline for AI regulation?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Geoffrey Hinton told a closed Senate briefing, convened by Senator Bernie Sanders, that Congress has roughly a year to establish meaningful AI guardrails before things become genuinely hard to control. He appeared alongside AI safety researcher Max Tegmark and Ajeya Cotra from Open Philanthropy, warning that AI is now designing better AI in an accelerating feedback loop. Developers tracking AI policy shifts follow debates like this one on daily.dev."}},{"@type":"Question","name":"What happened to the AI Emergency Button Act in the Senate?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Senator John Kennedy introduced the AI Emergency Button Act, which would require a shutdown mechanism for advanced AI models, but Senator Rand Paul objected and blocked it the same day it was introduced. The related AI Kill Switch Act remains stalled, and a proposed Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act has not even been formally introduced. Anyone weighing how AI governance might affect their work can follow this story on daily.dev."}}]} ```