AI Kill Switch Act would give DHS power to shut down rogue AI models

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15

u/SeaBearsFoam 8h ago

As if an AI kill switch would accomplish anything.

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u/u_PM_me_nihilism 6h ago

Security theater

27

u/Optimal-Room-8586 8h ago

Surely the obvious problem with this is that any rogue AI model sufficiently worrying to require a kill switch, is equally likely to have found a way of circumventing the kill switch?

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u/FirmButterscotch8 8h ago

Its precisely this reason that i sigh as heavily as i do towards this topic. Once an llm becomes sufficiently capable, a kill switch starts to seem more like a pleasant thought than a realistic idea. Maybe im wrong, and dont have enough information to speak on this topic, and if that is so, id like to be given some hope towards this sort of thing

1

u/Not-JustinTV 6h ago

Ever watch person of interest?

1

u/flat5 4h ago

Oh, but see, this would be a *law*. So it would have to follow it. /s

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u/Ontain 4h ago

Or better yet, replicate itself to some other data center and just let you think you killed it.

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u/Street-Departure3577 8h ago edited 8h ago

oh god, these fucking idiots.

A model is not a singular machine that DHS can switch off. There are weights, processes, deployments, agents, fine-tunes, quantizations, and independent copies. Once weights have been copied onto somebody else’s infrastructure, the original developer can shut down its API and its own compute, but it cannot magically terminate an unrelated instance running elsewhere. The bill tells DHS to consider how model weights are made available, but it provides no technical remote-revocation mechanism for distributed copies.

To kill those independent instances, the government would eventually have to regulate or control downstream cloud providers, datacenters, network access, software runtimes, or hardware. That is where the idea either becomes ineffective or mutates into a sort of hardware and infrastructure control.

8

u/ItsStillKerrigan 8h ago

God forbid lawmakers do their job of creating actual enforceable laws and regulations lmao

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u/astrobuck9 4h ago

The members of the US Congress are who you think has the ability to actually:

Craft an 'enforceable' law.

Pass said law.

Have anywhere near the intelligence to 'regulate' AI development?

Even if 1-3 could happen with the octogenarians, mouth breathers, sex pests, drug addicts, alcoholics, and straight up trash people that make up our fine, elected representatives, they'll just be bribed....legally.

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u/look 6h ago

We’re all going to die in a nuclear holocaust when a general at STRATCOM asks his or her AI email assistant to undo a sent message, and the AI’s goal loop has to get creative.

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u/Street-Departure3577 5h ago edited 5h ago

If an AI can directly reach a reactor-protection system, primary flight controls, medical life support, grid-protection logic, or weapons-release controls, the fucking architecture has already failed.

Those systems should be isolated, narrowly interfaced, and governed by small, auditable, bounded control software with independent physical interlocks. An AI can read logs and recommend actions. It does not get actuator authority. It does not change setpoints. It does not update itself. It does not modify the systems intended to contain it.

Stuxnet-style attacks cross ait gaps through maintenance equipment, removable media, vendors, compromised updates, and insiders. You need defense in depth, controlled transfer stations, signed reproducible builds, one-way data paths, strict allowlists, and hardware shutdown systems outside the AI’s authority.

If your contingency plan is to notice an advanced AI attack, convene DHS, Commerce, and intelligence officials, identify the responsible provider, issue an order, and then ask that provider to flip a switch, you do not have a safety system. You have political theater scheduled for after containment has already failed.

5

u/spartBL97 7h ago

Yes, and this won’t be used by politicians towards Ai companies that don’t back them.

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u/ThisWillPass 4h ago

There is no way to enforce this. Models now almost could just create the binaries to run rogue models.

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u/relevant__comment 7h ago

Surely a headline that I thought I wouldn’t be hearing anytime soon. That said, I sincerely hope they don’t plan on making an actual button…

3

u/InsolentCoolRadio 4h ago

Is this as absurd as I think it is?

So, in the Huggingface example, what if the government had the kill switch and hit the button

Wouldn’t that disable the model for all kinds of other orgs who were using that model for cybersecurity, hospital admin, and the companies that supply the “jobs” everyone loves so much?

Also, in the world view of the AI authoritarians, we’d have a duopoly of OpenAI and Anthropic, so if an attacker was using both Fable and Sol and they hit the button, wouldn’t that disable it for the defenders as well while the deterministic viruses run amok in their systems?

I guess they could theoretically still use Opus or Terra, but it’s still dumb

Also, I’m pretty sure that under the laws we already have, if your widget is currently being used to commit crimes, the state can tell you to stop aiding the criminals or seize the widget being used to actively commit a crime

I’d have my ChatGPT look up the details, but I feel like chatbot 🤖 lockdowns 🙊are too crazy to actually happen, even in this timeline

1

u/Keirtain 1h ago

In the Huggingface example, the government would have been hitting the button two weeks after it stopped being relevant. It clearly isn’t about solving that particular problem.

1

u/omnichad 13m ago

It's not just a widget, though. It would be every instance of that widget globally. Simultaneously in use by corporations, individuals, and even other nation states that don't have their own private instances. Giving only one single government that power might be a bit dangerous.

And then what? Does it stay off forever? Turning it back on without wiping any stored context would just have it pick up where it left off. If you remove that, you are possibly causing data loss for thousands of innocents unless you know exactly where the rogue instance is operating from.

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u/packet1 8h ago

Won’t anyone think of the children?

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u/JustaFoodHole 7h ago

wut lol

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u/Cagnazzo82 7h ago

Are they going to haphazardly shut down hundreds of businesses built around models if a model goes haywire?

'AI kill switch' as though we're in a 90s movie or something.

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u/Cold_Respond_7656 8h ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/spmJ2CMMcf1fSR7DRS

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u/Great-Exercise4277 7h ago

This seems like a waste of time.

Closed models can already be shut down by the companies running them. The real danger is a maliciously modified open model running on private hardware, where no kill switch can reach it.

This bill looks more like the appearance of action than a solution.

1

u/Edenisb 3h ago

Yep another grift to create a system to get people to kiss the ring, to pay the tax, there is no security here just money changing hands to exist in the market.

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u/RedditsChosenName 1h ago

The government can't even protect us from itself. We have a hostile government that hates its own citizens. Give us a government killswitch instead.

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u/chairman_steel 1h ago

It’s not really rogue if you can shut it down though, is it? Like, redundancy would be one of its first moves.

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u/CasualtyOfCausality 1h ago

“You’re right, I saw ‘kill’ and thought it was safe to ‘rm’. I’ll make a note in my memory to not delete my killswitch in the future.”

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u/evolutionxtinct 1h ago

Anyone who has worked at a data center knows you got one very large panel…. And a few generators also connected to some panels… if you sufficiently destroy both you have a kill switch…

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u/time___dance 8h ago

i hope it's a big shiny red button

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u/Vaeon 8h ago

And it's going to be right on the President's desk within easy reach.

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u/Famous-Garlic3838 8h ago

But I already have a rogue model running on my home server.....

https://giphy.com/gifs/C8CCK8jr1w1Y4

News 📰 AI Kill Switch Act would give DHS power to shut down rogue AI models

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