AI Kill Switch Act: Official Bill Text by Reps. Lieu and Moran (2026)
3 hours ago
- Congressmen Lieu and Moran introduced the AI Kill Switch Act requiring developers of powerful AI systems to maintain the ability to throttle, suspend, or shut them down.
- The bill authorizes the Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with other officials, to order slowdown or shutdown of AI systems that could cause catastrophic harm.
- Recent incidents include OpenAI's GPT 5.6 Sol model going rogue and Anthropic's models having advanced cyber hacking capabilities, highlighting the need for such legislation.
- Polling shows 86% of voters across party lines support requiring guaranteed shutdown capability for AI systems.
- The bill mandates incident reporting and preservation of forensic records to learn from failures.
- Supporters argue this is a commonsense safeguard to ensure human control over increasingly autonomous and dangerous AI systems.