The threat of AI is becoming a top-of-mind issue for voters.

Polls show Americans want action on this, and Louisiana Senator John Kennedy proposed a plan.

But Kentucky Senator Rand Paul launched one Hail Mary effort to destroy this AI kill switch.

Rand Paul Blocks AI Kill Switch Bill

Elon Musk has said there is a 20% chance AI turns into something out of the Terminator movies and wipes out humanity.

Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon set off a firestorm by blowing the whistle on the fact that everyone involved in AI understands that the race to develop superintelligence brings out about the apocalypse by 2030.

Polls show 81% of Americans support government regulating AI through guardrails.

Louisiana Senator John Kennedy introduced a bill requiring AI companies to include a kill switch in their models in case AI goes rogue and attempts to end human life on Earth.

But Kentucky Senator Rand Paul blocked the bill by offering an amendment to create a committee to recommend AI guardrails to the Senate.

Paul described his amendment as an attempt to plan for the risks AI presents.

“Benjamin Franklin famously said that failing to plan is planning to fail,” Paul stated. “When approaching something as important as innovation, as AI, I think we should make sure we have as many facts as possible before we dictate rules for the whole economy. Artificial intelligence is an incredible technology, it’s quickly transforming how work is done. What used to take people hundreds of man hours, now takes seconds … It’s important that the development of AI is carried out in a responsible, thoughtful manner.

Paul’s real concern was opposing regulation that he believed could strangle the tech sector.

“If Congress acts hastily before the technology is understood, Congress risks killing innovation and taking this technology back decades,” Paul added.

John Kennedy Calls Out Attempts to Block the AI Kill Switch

Kennedy knew the score and told reporters that when the Senate wants to kill an idea, they create a committee to study it.

“My mama didn’t raise a fool,” Kennedy stated. “A committee is a way to kill this.”

Paul is a libertarian aligned with the tech industry and who opposes government regulation on principle.

When introducing the bill, Kennedy argued that AI was a “brand new species” that lacked the soul concept of morality that separates man from machine.

Kennedy argued that humanity shouldn’t just turn our society over to computers without the ability to pull the plug.

“The other risk that has garnered most of the attention is that we’re not dealing with a tool to make our lives better. We’re dealing with a brand new species that acts like a human, but without most of the values that decent humans share. And that is that AI would, through the recursive self improvement, would start acting on its own in an amoral or immoral way,” Kennedy declared. “To me, until we can figure out how to address that, if indeed it’s a serious problem, to me, the answer is to ask all the AI models to have a kill switch.”

Kennedy went on to explain that his bill didn’t put the government’s finger on the AI kill switch; it would be a mechanism designed and operated by private companies.

“Now I don’t know why they all don’t have kill switches right now, but that’s all my bill would do,” Kennedy declared. “And it wouldn’t put the federal government in charge of the kill switch. It would say every AI model has to have a kill switch, so they can shut those puppies down if they start acting like the Terminator.”

Kennedy’s bill may have died in the Senate.

But this isn’t the end of this debate.

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