As we try to make clear with our standard disclaimer, AI StopWatch is run by the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI), but operates somewhat independently so as to avoid causing confusion about MIRI’s official positions. So it’s probably best that I just cover MIRI’s position on the now formally introduced Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act of 2026 as an outside spectator.
MIRI is the oldest organization devoted to making sure artificial superintelligence would be a boon to humanity rather than an extinction-level disaster. The org’s founder, Eliezer Yudkowsky, helped establish the field of AI alignment, and identified many of the pitfalls around this technology. Together with MIRI president Nate Soares, Yudkowsky wrote a New York Times Bestselling book, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies. Published just last year, it helped bring attention to the race for superhuman AI and the reasons such machines would likely end humanity if developed using anything like current industry methods. Since its publication, Soares has been one of the most visible voices about the problem in the media, appearing on dozens of interviews and podcasts. (Here are a few recent ones.)
Yudkowsky and Soares are both famously hard to satisfy. They are vocal in their criticism of alignment plans and policy proposals that they see as coming up short against the underlying problems. So it is notable that they have endorsed the new bill from Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Greg Casar, via a post from a senior MIRI researcher calling it “the first piece of legislation that stands a chance at stopping this threat.”
The post praises the Act’s focus on banning artificial superintelligence (ASI) before it can be created — not merely regulating it — and its call to build international agreements to prevent its premature creation. Praise is also given to the bill’s requirement that advanced AI development be paused until the relevant government agency is set up for this work.
But the post also points to what MIRI sees as the bill’s shortcomings, most notably the absence of any provisions for tracking and monitoring AI chips, and its failure to restrict research that could advance the frontier despite compute-based restrictions on the training of new models.
MIRI is not inherently against humanity building superintelligence, and favors the development of AI insofar as the benefits outweigh the risks. For this reason, it actually worries that parts of the bill may go too far, by overly classifying safely narrow systems as potential “precursors” to ASI.
For example, if sufficient safety, security, and access controls were in place and developers were licensed, we could imagine it being a good tradeoff for DeepMind to create non-ASI, specialized medical AIs, even if unauthorized access could uplift biological weapons.
The post links to a draft of an international agreement to prevent the premature creation of artificial superintelligence, assembled by MIRI’s Technical Governance Team.
“Humanity needs to back off from building superintelligence until we have a better grasp on the alignment problem.” The Sanders-Casar bill, MIRI says, “would be a big step in that direction both in terms of direct impact and in the extent to which it takes serious issues seriously.”
The analyses and opinions expressed on AI StopWatch reflect the views of the individual contributors and the sources they cover, and should not be taken as official positions of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute.