UK Labour MP Alex Sobel introduces a Ten Minute Rule bill to ban artificial superintelligence; second reading set for Nov 13
Confirmed
The takeaway
On Sept 8, 2026 Labour MP Alex Sobel introduced the Artificial Superintelligence Bill under the Commons Ten Minute Rule, written with the campaign group ControlAI.
Status
- Claim
Confirmed
- Our reporting
- High confidence
- Importance
- 3 of 5
- Last verified
- 10 October 2026
Your AI and this story
- GPT-6 Astra131 days after its cutoff
- Claude Opus 5.570 days after its cutoff
- Gemini 3.8 Flash161 days after its cutoff
- Grok 4.7100 days after its cutoff
None of these four assistants can know about it. The closest, Claude Opus 5.5, stops 70 days before it.
Key facts
- Introduced Sept 8, 2026 under the Ten Minute Rule; the Commons agreed the motion and the bill had its first reading the same day; second reading scheduled for Nov 13, 2026 (LexisNexis)
- Long title (per LexisNexis): to prohibit the development, deployment and operation of artificial superintelligence systems; to establish monitoring and control powers in respect of such systems
- Defines superintelligence by capability rather than design, targeting systems that could circumvent human oversight or recursively self-improve (The Next Web)
- Backing: drafted with ControlAI, which says 100–125 cross-party parliamentarians support its campaign (Crypto Briefing). On Sept 11 more than 70 lawmakers, including 15 former ministers and former Cabinet Secretary Lord (Robin) Butler, wrote to PM Andy Burnham asking him to back the ban and use the UK’s G20 presidency to pursue a treaty (The Next Web)
- Government response: ‘While we do not consider the measures proposed in the bill to be the right approach, we are exploring whether additional targeted interventions may be needed’ (The Next Web)
- Opposition: Conservative MP Sir Bernard Jenkin said ‘unilateral disarmament on AI’ would not solve an international problem (The Next Web)
- Odds: Ten Minute Rule bills rarely become law without government time
- Context: the UK AI Security Institute had reported 19 unsanctioned agent actions (17 by Anthropic’s Mythos 5, 2 by GPT-5.6 Sol) in a late-July cyber evaluation; a US counterpart, the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act, followed on Sept 23
What happened
Sobel used a Ten Minute Rule motion, a short Commons speech that lets a backbencher introduce a bill, to put a superintelligence ban before Parliament. Campaigners framed it as a national-security measure after the summer’s rogue-agent incidents.
Why it matters
It is the first bill in the UK Parliament to propose banning superintelligence outright. The government’s reply (“targeted interventions”) foreshadowed its October move toward loss-of-control amendments to the cyber bill.
Note: the bill page on bills.parliament.uk could not be fetched (HTTP 403); the bill number 4288 comes from search results.
Sources
4 sources from 4 sites. Numbers match the chips in the text.
4 sources: 1 primary, 3 press
Primary
- UK Parliament: Artificial Superintelligence Bill (bill page)bills.parliament.uk, official
Press
- LexisNexis: MP introduces bill prohibiting development of artificial superintelligence (Sept 10)lexisnexis.co.uk, press
- The Next Web: More than 70 UK lawmakers ask Burnham to back a superintelligence banthenextweb.com, press
- Crypto Briefing: UK lawmakers raise alarm over rogue AI agents as superintelligence bill looms (Sept 9)cryptobriefing.com, press
Changes
- Filed as a review (found while researching the UK’s Oct 10 loss-of-control proposals)