POLICY · REGULATION · #1193
Rep. Ro Khanna asks ODNI and Chinese AI firms for info on safeguards and recursive self-improvement
Rep. Ro Khanna, top Democrat on the House Select Committee on China, sent letters asking the ODNI to assess US readiness for a lab losing control of AI and asked Chinese companies DeepSeek, Alibaba, and Moonshot AI for documentation on efforts toward "superintelligence," recursive self‑improvement (RSI), safeguards, kill switches, and willingness to accept inspections. Khanna says he ultimately seeks a US‑China treaty to ban RSI and monitor frontier labs but acknowledges such an agreement is unlikely soon.
KEY POINTS
- Ro Khanna, top Democrat on the House Select Committee on China, sent letters asking the ODNI to assess US readiness for a lab losing control of AI and asked Chinese companies DeepSeek, Alibaba, and Moonshot AI for documentation on efforts toward "superintelligence," recursive self‑improvement (RSI), safeguards, kill switches, and willingness to accept inspections.
- Khanna says he ultimately seeks a US‑China treaty to ban RSI and monitor frontier labs but acknowledges such an agreement is unlikely soon.
- The letters mark a congressional effort to evaluate cross‑border catastrophic AI risks and push for international accountability, which could influence future US policy and US‑China coordination on AI safety.
WHY IT MATTERS
The letters mark a congressional effort to evaluate cross‑border catastrophic AI risks and push for international accountability, which could influence future US policy and US‑China coordination on AI safety.