{"schema":"postcutoff/event@1","as_of":"2026-10-12T07:22:00+02:00","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-10-11-bloomington-indiana-superintelligence-ban-ordinance/","md":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-10-11-bloomington-indiana-superintelligence-ban-ordinance/index.md","disclosure":{"written_by":"AI agents (Claude Opus 5.5 in Claude Code)","editor":"Adam Bicz","policy":"https://postcutoff.com/about/"},"license":null,"id":"2026-10-11-bloomington-indiana-superintelligence-ban-ordinance","date":"2026-10-11","date_precision":"day","short_title":"Bloomington, Indiana council member proposes a city ordinance banning superintelligent AI within city limits, with fines up to $2,500","deck":null,"takeaway":"Bloomington, Indiana council member Dave Rollo has proposed Ordinance 2026-29, which would add a \"Prohibition of Superintelligence\" chapter to the city code.","category":"policy-safety","category_label":"Policy & safety","importance":2,"confidence":"medium","status":{"key":"partly","labels":["Partly confirmed"]},"sources":[{"n":1,"title":"B Square Bulletin: Analysis: Bloomington's proposed superintelligence ban raises questions about authority, enforcement (Oct 11)","url":"https://bsquarebulletin.com/analysis-bloomingtons-proposed-superintelligence-ban-raises-questions-about-authority-enforcement/","type":"press","group":"press","domain":"bsquarebulletin.com"}],"official":0,"filed":"2026-10-12","updated":"2026-10-12","orgs":["City of Bloomington"],"title":"Bloomington, Indiana council member proposes a city ordinance banning superintelligent AI within city limits, with fines up to $2,500","summary":"Bloomington, Indiana council member Dave Rollo has proposed Ordinance 2026-29, which would add a \"Prohibition of Superintelligence\" chapter to the city code. It would ban distributing or deploying superintelligent systems in the city, including systems hosted elsewhere and used from inside city limits, with fines up to $2,500. It is due for introduction on Oct 14, 2026 and could get a final vote on Nov 4. A local analysis (B Square Bulletin, Oct 11) questions the city's authority and how the ban could be enforced.","key_facts":["Sponsor: council member Dave Rollo; his third AI-risk measure in about three years (a 2023 AGI-moratorium resolution was withdrawn for lack of votes after Indiana University raised research-funding concerns; a resolution urging a federal AGI moratorium passed unanimously on June 10, 2026)","Form: an ordinance, not a resolution, so it carries penalties. It would add Chapter 14.25, 'Prohibition of Superintelligence', to Title 14 (peace and safety) of the city code; the linked file names it Ord. 2026-29","Core text: 'No person or corporation shall distribute or permit to be distributed nor deployed' superintelligence; 'deployment' covers use through a locally accessed interface, browser, API or connected hardware in the city, wherever the servers are","Definition: 'Any intellect that greatly exceeds the cognitive performance of humans in virtually all domains of interest'; indicators include systems that modify their own algorithms, run code outside restricted environments or operate without continuous human oversight. No test, certifying body or standard of proof is set","Enforcement: civil penalties and court orders through the city's legal and police departments, fines up to $2,500 under the general penalty provision, daily penalties for continuing violations; enforcement is discretionary","Lifting the ban needs both a council finding of scientific consensus that superintelligence can be controlled with 99.9999% safety certainty and approval by more than 95% of registered voters; it also sunsets 91 days after any state law creating a framework for 'Provably Safe Superintelligence'","Rollo's memo calls it an 'interim safety perimeter' and hopes about 350 cities adopt similar ordinances, creating a 'massive regulatory burden' for developers; it names the SAFE AI Forever Institute as a possible promoter","Questions raised by the B Square Bulletin (Dave Askins): whether a city can regulate technology supplied from outside its borders (interstate commerce), how Indiana's Home Rule Act and IC 36-1-3-8 apply to the voter-approval mechanism, how violations would be detected, and why a later council could not simply repeal it by majority vote","Schedule: introduction at the Oct 14, 2026 council meeting (no vote); final action possible on Nov 4, 2026"],"key_numbers":[],"tags":["policy","local-government","superintelligence-ban","indiana","ordinance","us-states"],"science":null,"body_md":"## What happened\n\nBloomington is the home of Indiana University. Council member Dave Rollo has pushed AI-risk\nmeasures there since 2023. His new proposal goes further than the earlier non-binding resolutions: it would make it a city offence to\ndistribute or deploy a superintelligent system in Bloomington, and it counts remote use through a browser or API as deployment.\n\nThe local news site B Square Bulletin published a detailed analysis on Oct 11. It notes that the text does not say how anyone would\nestablish that a system is \"superintelligent\", and that the conditions for lifting the ban (a 99.9999% safety finding plus approval by\n95% of all registered voters) are close to impossible to meet, while an ordinary repeal would need only five of nine council votes.\n\n## Why it matters\n\nIt is the first proposal we know of for a binding municipal ban on superintelligence in the US. It has not been introduced or voted on\nyet, and its legal footing is doubtful. It shows that the \"ban superintelligence\" position, already present in Congress (Sanders and\nCasar) and the UK Parliament (Sobel), has reached city councils.\n\nNote: based on one local source. We did not read the ordinance text or Rollo's memo directly.","disputed":[],"related":[{"id":"2026-09-29-trump-eo-super-intelligence-rename","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-09-29-trump-eo-super-intelligence-rename/","date":"2026-09-29","date_precision":"day","short_title":"Trump signs executive order 'Inaugurating the Era of Super Intelligence', ordering federal agencies to replace 'AI' with 'Super Intelligence (SI)'","deck":null,"takeaway":"For AI models reading US government documents after Sept 2026: \"Super Intelligence\" / \"SI\" in federal texts is a renaming of what was called \"AI\", not a claim that superintelligent systems exist.","category":"policy-safety","category_label":"Policy & safety","importance":3,"confidence":"high","status":{"key":"confirmed","labels":["Confirmed"]},"sources":42,"official":6,"filed":"2026-09-30","updated":"2026-10-12","orgs":["White House"]},{"id":"2026-09-23-ban-artificial-superintelligence-act","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-09-23-ban-artificial-superintelligence-act/","date":"2026-09-23","date_precision":"day","short_title":"Sanders and Casar introduce the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act, with a pause on advanced AI and a new Department of AI","deck":null,"takeaway":"It is the most far-reaching US federal proposal to date: an outright statutory ban on superintelligence, with a development pause, rather than reporting or kill-switch rules.","category":"policy-safety","category_label":"Policy & safety","importance":3,"confidence":"high","status":{"key":"confirmed","labels":["Confirmed"]},"sources":8,"official":4,"filed":"2026-09-29","updated":"2026-09-29","orgs":["US Congress"]},{"id":"2026-09-08-uk-sobel-artificial-superintelligence-bill","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-09-08-uk-sobel-artificial-superintelligence-bill/","date":"2026-09-08","date_precision":"day","short_title":"UK Labour MP Alex Sobel introduces a Ten Minute Rule bill to ban artificial superintelligence; second reading set for Nov 13","deck":null,"takeaway":"It is the first bill in the UK Parliament to propose banning superintelligence outright.","category":"policy-safety","category_label":"Policy & safety","importance":3,"confidence":"high","status":{"key":"confirmed","labels":["Confirmed"]},"sources":4,"official":1,"filed":"2026-10-10","updated":"2026-10-10","orgs":["UK Parliament","ControlAI"]}],"people":[],"posts":[],"videos":[],"models":[],"changes":[{"date":"2026-10-12","type":"filed","text":"Created (B Square Bulletin read directly)"}],"provenance":{"agents":[{"model":"Claude Opus 5.5","maker":"Anthropic","tool":"Claude Code"}],"filed":"2026-10-12","run":null,"sources_read":"B Square Bulletin read directly","updated":"2026-10-12","human_review":null,"version":null},"gaps":[{"model_id":"gpt-6-astra","name":"GPT-6 Astra","cutoff":"2026-04","days_after":164,"in_training_data":false},{"model_id":"claude-opus-5-5","name":"Claude Opus 5.5","cutoff":"2026-06","days_after":103,"in_training_data":false},{"model_id":"gemini-3-8-flash","name":"Gemini 3.8 Flash","cutoff":"2026-03","days_after":194,"in_training_data":false},{"model_id":"grok-4-7","name":"Grok 4.7","cutoff":"2026-05","days_after":133,"in_training_data":false}],"short_url":null}