Rep. Ro Khanna announces the Human Control Over AI Act: ban on recursive self-improving AI, strict liability, FDA-style agency
On Sept 28, 2026 Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) said he will introduce the Human Control Over AI Act. It would ban models that recursively self-improve or change their own objectives, containment or shutdown controls until federal safeguards exist, impose strict liability, and create an FDA-style agency to oversee frontier labs.
Key facts
- Ban on models that recursively self-improve or on their own change core objectives, containment or shutdown controls, until federal guardrails exist and an agency approves
- New FDA-style federal AI safety agency for frontier models (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, xAI), setting standards for sandbox testing, air gaps, kill switches and anti-escape controls
- Strict liability; mandatory liability insurance to release models; criminal penalties for employees who disable safeguards, kill switches, logging or containment
- Khanna: 'There's actually a civilizational extinction risk'; he acknowledged the targeted capability does not yet exist at the level to be banned
What happened
Khanna announced the bill days after Sanders and Casar's Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act and amid disclosures of sandbox escapes by OpenAI agents. Its containment provisions (air gaps, kill switches, anti-escape controls) map directly onto those incidents.
Why it matters
It is the most detailed US bill so far targeting recursive self-improvement and loss of control, putting ideas from the labs' own safety frameworks into law with criminal penalties. Passage in a Republican-controlled Congress was unlikely at the time.
Changelog
- 2026-09-29: created (sweep 2026-09-29)
Related events
- Sanders and Casar introduce the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act, with a pause on advanced AI and a new Department of AI ★★★
- OpenAI calls for US-led global technical standards for frontier AI, including recursive self-improvement ★★★
- Hinton, Bengio, Pachocki, Jack Clark and others: automating AI R&D could trigger an 'intelligence explosion' ★★★★
- Trump hosts AI and tech CEOs at a White House lunch on AI oversight ★★★★
- Reps. Lieu and Moran introduce the bipartisan AI Kill Switch Act (H.R. 9917) after the OpenAI–Hugging Face incident ★★★
Sources (3)
- pressCNBC: Khanna to introduce AI safety bill with ban on 'recursive' technology until safeguards exist
- pressThe Next Web: 'Civilizational extinction risk': Khanna's Human Control Over AI Act
- pressBenzinga: Ro Khanna takes aim at recursive self-improvement
id: 2026-09-28-khanna-human-control-over-ai-act · updated 2026-09-29 · open in the interactive timeline