The text of the bill can be found here. It begins by citing the warnings of AI company CEOs and deep learning pioneers Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, the 2023 FLI open letter calling for a 6-month pause, and the 2025 FLI statement on superintelligence. The bill would prohibits the construction or upgrading of AI datacenters until Congress pass an AI safety law aimed at preventing AI companies "from releasing harmful products into the world that threaten the health and well-being of working families, our privacy and civil rights, and the future of humanity". It would also impose export controls for advanced chips "to any country or entity that does not have laws and regulations in place to protect humanity from AI safety concerns and existential risks, protect workers, and protect the environment". Sen. Sanders and Rep. Ocasio-Cortez announced the bill in a live press conference:
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One reason this is important is because AOC is very likely to run for president in 2028, and has so far been quite judicious about which policies she chooses to publicly support and endorse.
This is either an attempt to test the waters on AI regulation, to see if it will become part of her platform, or she is already convinced it will be. If she runs, she will then be in a position to leverage this policy to convince other Democratic presidential candidates to adopt similar measures (or a rhetorical anti-AI framing). The other most likely candidate for president is Gavin Newsom, in whose state most of the leading AI companies are headquartered.