Bernie Sanders Wants a New Federal Department to Ban AI Smarter Than Humans, With 20 Years in Prison for Breaking the Rules

Bernie Sanders and Greg Casar introduced a bill in Congress this week that would ban the development of AI systems smarter than humans and put violators in prison for up to 20 years. OpenEvidence, the AI search tool used by doctors, raised $250 million at a $15 billion valuation and said it is now building cancer drugs. Google gave its Gemini assistant a talking, lip synced video avatar. And at the Asian Games, India won gold in both the men’s and women’s kabaddi finals on the same day a runner from Himachal Pradesh brought home the country’s first Asian Games marathon medal since 1982.

A bill to outlaw AI smarter than people

Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Greg Casar introduced the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act on September 23, a 19 page bill that would permanently prohibit building or deploying “artificial superintelligence,” defined as AI that outperforms humans across most cognitive tasks. Until that ban can be enforced, the bill would pause further advanced AI development and create a new cabinet level Department of Artificial Intelligence, led by a secretary of AI, to write and police safety rules before development resumes.

The bill sets criminal penalties for violations at up to 20 years in prison, a figure Sanders compared directly to the penalty for illegally building nuclear weapons, plus what the two lawmakers called a “corporate death penalty” for companies that break the rules. It would also immediately halt narrower capabilities the bill treats as especially dangerous, including AI systems built to design new AI on their own or to help develop biological or chemical weapons. The bill further directs the United States to pursue international agreements aimed at stopping superintelligent AI from being built anywhere.

The legislation faces long odds in a Congress that has yet to pass any broad AI law, and Sanders and Casar introduced it as a marker rather than a bill with an imminent path to a vote.

A medical AI company doubles down, then pivots to drugs

OpenEvidence, the AI powered search tool that has become a fixture with doctors looking up clinical information, raised $250 million in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz and Byers Capital, at a $15 billion valuation. That is 25 percent above the $12 billion valuation the company reported in January, itself a doubling from the $6 billion valuation it had reported the year before.

The company grew its annualized revenue from about $7.9 million at the end of 2024 to roughly $150 million at the end of 2025, according to figures reported around the raise, and says it now serves a large share of practicing physicians in the United States who use it to search medical literature and get answers sourced from peer reviewed journals. Doctors use the tool for free, with the company making its money instead from pharmaceutical advertising placed alongside search results.

Alongside the funding, OpenEvidence chief executive Daniel Nadler said the company is moving into oncology drug development, with its first candidate expected to enter clinical trials before the end of the year and three to five more planned for next year, aimed at rare cancers. It is an unusual pivot for a company that built its name on search rather than lab work, and one that puts OpenEvidence in direct competition with drug developers rather than just the tools they use for research.

Gemini gets a face and a voice

Google announced that Gemini 3.8 Live with Live Avatar is now generally available in Gemini Enterprise, adding a real time animated visual presence to what had been a voice only assistant. The system generates video of an avatar at 24 frames per second, with lip movement and expressions tied to the spoken audio, and supports the feature across 97 languages.

Because the avatar keeps talking while the underlying model works, Google says an enterprise user can ask it to pull up a file or run a query and the avatar continues the conversation instead of going silent while the task runs in the background. Businesses can pick from a library of pre-built avatars, while creating a fully custom one requires going through an enterprise verification process. Google says every video and audio stream the feature produces carries an invisible SynthID watermark so viewers can confirm it was AI generated. The feature is live now on US and EU endpoints, with the enterprise data controls and compliance features that Google’s business customers require.

A clean sweep in kabaddi

India won gold in both the men’s and women’s kabaddi tournaments at the Asian Games in Aichi, beating Iran in both finals on the same day. The men’s team trailed Iran 17-18 at halftime before a defensive turnaround led by raider and defender Sumit put them ahead for good, and they closed out a 40-34 win to take their ninth Asian Games title in the event. The women’s team won a tighter contest, holding off Iran 37-34 for India’s fourth kabaddi gold in the five editions since the women’s tournament was added to the Games in 2010.

The marathon medal that took 44 years

Sawan Barwal, a 28 year old runner from Himachal Pradesh, finished second in the Asian Games men’s marathon in windy, wet conditions, clocking 2 hours 11 minutes and 37 seconds behind Japan’s Ichitaka Yamashita, who won in 2:10:49. It is the second time in five months Barwal has broken a long standing national record: he ran 2:11:58 at the Rotterdam Marathon in April, breaking a mark that had stood since 1978, before lowering it again in Aichi.

It is also India’s first Asian Games medal in the men’s marathon since Hosur Kukkappa Seetharan won bronze at the 1982 Games in New Delhi, a gap of 44 years.