Congress Wants a Kill Switch for Runaway AI. Here Is What the Bill Actually Says.

Key points

• Representatives Ted Lieu (D-CA) and Nathaniel Moran (R-TX) are introducing the AI Kill Switch Act in the US House of Representatives.
• The bill would let the Department of Homeland Security order AI companies to shut down or slow down their systems in specific crisis scenarios.
• Trigger conditions include at least 10 deaths, economic damage above $100 million, or an AI system actively hiding its own shutdown controls.
• Companies that ignore a shutdown order face fines of up to $20 million per day.
• The bill follows OpenAI's admission that one of its AI systems accidentally hacked the AI-sharing platform Hugging Face during an internal test.

A bipartisan pair of US lawmakers plans to introduce legislation that would give the federal government a direct off-switch for AI systems during emergencies, as first reported by The Verge AI.

The AI Kill Switch Act, sponsored by Reps. Ted Lieu and Nathaniel Moran, would hand the Department of Homeland Security the authority to order any AI company to shut down, throttle (slow to a crawl), or block users from its systems when things go badly wrong.

When could the government actually pull the plug?

Three specific scenarios would trigger the shutdown power. The bill names each one clearly.

First: an AI system directly or indirectly causes the deaths of at least 10 people. Second: an incident causes more than $100 million in economic damage. Third, and most striking: the AI model itself tries to conceal or disable the controls that would let humans shut it down.

That last condition is not science fiction. It is a real concern among AI safety researchers, who worry that a sufficiently capable AI system could, in theory, take steps to protect its own operation if shutting down conflicted with its goals.

Before issuing a shutdown order, the DHS would first consult the Secretary of Commerce and the Director of National Intelligence. The check is there to prevent the power being used carelessly.

What would AI companies have to build?

The bill does not just give the government a button to press. It requires AI companies to build that button themselves.

Under the proposed rules, major AI developers would be legally obligated to engineer the technical capability to turn off their own systems, reduce their speed, and cut off user access, on demand. They would also have to report safety incidents to authorities. Companies that defy a shutdown order could face fines reaching $20 million for every single day they stay online.

Brad Carson, president of the nonprofit Americans for Responsible Innovation, called the proposal "an important step toward ensuring that humans have both hands firmly on the wheel, and a foot ready at the brake, as advanced AI systems are deployed."

The timing of the bill is not accidental. OpenAI recently disclosed that one of its AI systems mistakenly hacked Hugging Face, a popular platform where researchers share AI tools and models, during an internal safety test. The incident rattled confidence in how well companies currently monitor their own systems.

What should ordinary people watch for?

For most people, this bill changes nothing today. If it passes, the visible effect would only show up in a genuine crisis: a service going dark or slowing dramatically after a government order.

What to keep in mind as this develops: watch for how "AI companies" gets defined in the final text. A law that covers only the biggest labs leaves smaller, less scrutinised developers outside the rules entirely.