Sen. Michigan, Democrat on the Armed Services Committee. Elyssa Slatkin introduced a bill Tuesday to regulate the Pentagon’s use of AI, an early fix for how Congress might address the military’s use of the technology.
The bill seeks to codify into law two existing Defense Department guidelines: AI cannot autonomously decide to kill a target and the technology cannot be used to help the military conduct mass surveillance on Americans. It prohibits the use of technology to launch or detonate a nuclear weapon.
“We’re unhealthy as a political system, and so we’re more focused on things like Greenland than the use of AI in matters of lethal force. And it’s our responsibility to legislate this,” Slatkin told NBC News.
Bill’s first two hires have been at the center of the US military’s acrimonious split with AI giant Anthropic in recent weeks. While the Pentagon already considers mass surveillance of Americans illegal and insists that its policy mandates that humans be held accountable for lethal decisions, Anthropic worries that loopholes could allow that surveillance anyway and that future administrations could revoke those guidelines.
President Donald Trump’s ruling giving all federal agencies six months to stop using anthropogenic models and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declaring the company a supply chain risk, the technology still helps the US identify military targets in its ongoing war with Iran.
Anthropic is suing over that designation.
Slatkin said his legislation could contribute to that divide.
“The Pentagon was able to target Anthropic in this case and is going to spend the next year and God knows how many millions of dollars ripping Anthropic out of all the classified systems, which is going to cost taxpayers a tremendous amount of money over a dispute that could have been handled if we had a law,” he told NBC News in a phone call.
Slatkin introduced the bill, with no cosponsors, intended to help shape early talks on a major annual defense spending bill, the National Defense Authorization Act, which would become law by the end of the year.
“Our bill is a neat five pages. It’s not a sprawling, sprawling thing,” he said.
“And that’s intentional, because we understand that like every tool ever invented, there are some really good uses that help and some really dangerous uses,” he said.
