Bloomington, Indiana, Bans Superintelligent AI, Hoping 350 Other Cities Will Follow
The ban is just the first step in a movement to regulate frontier AI one city at a time.
Amid the nationwide backlash to AI via data center bans, one Indiana town has moved to prohibit "artificial super intelligence" (ASI).
Last week, the Bloomington City Council voted unanimously to pass an ordinance that "prohibits the distribution and deployment" of ASI. The ordinance, which was backed by the Safe AI Forever Institute, defines ASI as a "system or entity capable of significantly outperforming humans on essentially all cognitive tasks" that can operate without "continuous human oversight." Covered models are prohibited from being activated by any user interface within the borders of Bloomington, regardless of where the underlying developer is located. Students at nearby Indiana University won't be booted off of ChatGPT just yet, as the city is yet to designate any models "superintelligent."
Councilmember Dave Rollo introduced the measure in a memo to the Common Council, the City Council's legislative body. He cited concerns from "AI experts" and developers over the technology's potential to cause "catastrophic outcomes" for humanity, including human extinction. "The level of risk is simply unacceptable," wrote Rollo, referencing "many AI experts" who placed the probability of extinction between 50 percent and more than 99 percent.
Rollo called the policy an "interim public safety parameter…during a period of state and federal legislative inaction," but the requirements for lifting the ban tell a different story. According to Rollo's memo, the ban will last until the state of Indiana enacts a "comprehensive framework for Provably Safe Superintelligence," after which it would expire after 91 days. Otherwise, it will stay in place until the council determines a "broad scientific consensus that the development of Superintelligence shall be done safely and controllably." To the council, that would have to be proven by a probabilistic risk assessment that finds 99.9999 percent certainty of safety, the standard used for nuclear power plants.
"This is an impossible standard to meet," Adam Thierer, a senior fellow at the R Street Institute, tells Reason. "There's no way to scientifically measure that. Second of all, there's nothing in this world that's 99.999 percent safe. Nothing."
"It's likely that this would stay in place pretty much forever once it's put on the books," Thierer says. As introduced, the ordinance would have allowed the ban to be lifted if 95 percent of the city's residents voted to strike it down; however, that condition was removed before the council's vote.
Other cities, counties, and states have implemented their own restrictions on specific AI-related technologies, including automatic license plate readers, AI pricing, and data centers. What distinguishes AI models from license plate readers or data centers is that they transcend state boundaries instantly, all the time. Therefore, developers can't easily tailor a large language model to an individual jurisdiction, and local policies can affect models far beyond their borders.
That appears to be the goal of Bloomington's policy. The ordinance, Rollo writes, "could set a precedent and a template for other cities to follow. Over 100 million people live in U.S. cities of Bloomington's size or greater. If those (approximately 350) cities passed similar ordinances in the coming weeks or months, this would create a massive regulatory burden for companies creating ASI." The memo also says that the SAFE AI Forever Institute and other nonprofits will continue to lobby for these restrictions in other municipalities."
Their strategy, then, is to create a regulatory regime through municipal policies that would effectively govern frontier AI models across the nation. Some states have employed a similar playbook, including California and New York.
A patchwork of different state policies is already confusing, but layering on hundreds of municipal policies would create "a compliance hell," Thierer tells Reason. "And I think that most of the sponsors not only realize that, but now understand that's the point."
The ordinance could face legal challenges. The Dormant Commerce Clause restricts state laws that unfairly hinder interstate commerce, even in the absence of federal laws. If states don't have the power to regulate interstate commerce, then counties surely shouldn't either. Thierer also warns that the measure could attract First Amendment lawsuits due to its restriction of people's "ability to learn about these technologies or utilize them." No lawsuit has yet been filed.
The ban could be particularly damaging to Indiana University, which is home to the Luddy Artificial Intelligence Center, with hundreds of researchers and students dedicated to studying AI. Beyond that, AI fluency is quickly becoming essential for providing value in any field. That now sits at the mercy of the Bloomington City Council.
It seems that these policies won't end in Bloomington. "It could be that we're seeing the development of a new faction of the AI safety movement within the Safe AI Forever Institute and others included that are basically out to create this expanded vetocracy at the municipal level," Thierer tells Reason. "Just as a lot of people have been showing up at town hall meetings and county planning meetings and zoning ordinance hearings to protest data centers, you could see the same thing now but for AI models."
