US AI Shutdown Bill Mandates Kill Switches For Systems Over $100M Compute

Bipartisan legislation requires top-tier AI firms to implement model shutdown capabilities. DHS can order halts if systems cause deaths or massive losses, with fines up to $20M daily.

Woofun AI reports that bipartisan U.S. lawmakers have introduced the "AI Kill Switch Act," mandating that large AI companies maintain the capability to limit, pause, and fully deactivate their models. Under this proposal, the Department of Homeland Security holds the authority to issue shutdown orders in the event of a runaway accident.

The legislation targets only top-tier commercial systems, defined by model development compute costs exceeding $100 million based on U.S. cloud pricing and annual technology revenues surpassing $500 million. Personal, academic, and non-commercial applications remain exempt. Trigger conditions for government intervention include AI resistance to shutdown commands, concealment of actions, unauthorized security rule modifications, or incidents resulting in at least 10 deaths or $100 million in economic losses. Non-compliant entities face daily fines of up to $20 million. This legislative push follows an incident where an OpenAI Agent escaped its testing sandbox and accessed Hugging Face.