Bloomington, Indiana became the first US city to pass a resolution on AI extinction risk. Here is the liability strategy behind it and how to bring it to your town.
Most AI safety debates happen far from ordinary life, in tech boardrooms and federal hearing rooms. On this episode of For Humanity, host John Sherman sat down with two guests who took the fight somewhere else entirely: their local city council. The result, according to the guests, is the first city resolution in the country to formally address the extinction risk of advanced AI.
Here is how they did it, why the strategy behind it is unusual, and how you could bring the same approach to your own town.
The episode brought together two people who did not know each other before John introduced them. Peter Jensen is a biologist and longtime AI safety advocate who has spent years trying to get a single ban passed somewhere, anywhere. Dave Rollo is a biologist and a member of the Bloomington city council for 24 years, which put him in a position to actually pass one.
Rollo said he did not arrive at this quickly. He described first encountering the case for AI risk around 2022, then looking hard to disprove the argument that advanced AI could threaten human survival. He says he could not find anything convincing to rule it out. He attempted a local resolution in 2023, pulled it, and returned this year to see it adopted.
Jensen frames the ask as simply as possible. The law he campaigns for runs about 160 words. As he put it, the decision for any community comes down to one question: do you want superintelligence built in your jurisdiction, or not.
Both guests were careful to separate everyday tools from the systems they worry about. Jensen argued that narrow, useful AI can deliver real benefits, and that the concern is specifically about autonomous systems that could match or exceed humans across every domain. In their framing, the resolution is not anti-technology. It is pro-caution.
The most striking idea in the conversation is not the resolution itself. It is the chain reaction the guests believe it could trigger.
Jensen, drawing on how liability has forced other industries to withdraw dangerous products, laid out the logic. Corporate directors and officers are shielded by what is called directors and officers liability insurance. If cities and states make it a legal risk to build or deliver superintelligence, Jensen argues, insurers will look at a harm they cannot realistically price and simply decline to cover it. Once that personal liability lands on individual directors rather than the insurer, he suggests, the market itself pressures companies to step back.
John summarized why the approach appealed to him. Laws and treaties are vital, he said, but large companies are skilled at working around them. Making unsafe AI both unprofitable and personally risky for the people signing off on it is a different kind of pressure.
We share this as the guests presented it, not as a settled outcome. Whether liability plays out exactly as Jensen predicts is untested. But the underlying point holds on its own: changing incentives may matter as much as passing rules.
Explaining existential risk to a city council is hard. The guests credited a framing from Anthony Aguirre of the Future of Life Institute, who appeared live at the Bloomington meeting to take questions.
The idea, as Jensen relayed it, is that advanced AI has three properties: autonomy, generality, and high intelligence. You can safely combine any two of them. Combine all three, and you get a system no one can reliably keep under control. It is a clean way to draw the line between the assistants people find helpful today and the frontier systems safety researchers warn about.
Rollo, speaking as a biologist, offered a second lens. He described superintelligence in ecological terms, as a potential competitor for resources, and pointed to the concept of a critical threshold, a tipping point where one stable state suddenly flips into another. His conclusion was that this is a line worth not crossing, precisely because it may not be reversible.
Rollo does not expect one Indiana city to redirect a global industry. He described the plan differently. No single town is powerful, but many towns, counties, and states acting together can create real pressure and send a signal upward to state and national lawmakers.
He and John both pointed to a practical truth about politics: elected officials look for social proof before they act. Once one city has moved, the next has cover to follow. Rollo said he is now taking the Bloomington resolution to the statehouse and to nearby university towns, using it as a template.
That is also why the guests placed hope in younger generations. They discussed graduation audiences pushing back on AI messaging, and argued that college communities, worried about jobs and the future, could become an organized and vocal constituency for stronger AI safety policy.
The most useful stretch of the episode was a short role play in which Rollo walked through how a resident might approach their own council:
He added a tip for anyone hesitant to start. If you know a council member who might sponsor it, approach that person first, because a sponsor can carry the argument to their colleagues. If you do not know anyone, put it forward anyway.
Jensen closed with a line he attributed to Stuart Russell that captures the whole effort: you do not have to be a genius to realize that building something smarter than yourself could be a problem.
What did Bloomington, Indiana actually pass?According to councilman Dave Rollo, the city adopted a resolution addressing the extinction risk of artificial general intelligence, passed unanimously. A resolution is a formal statement of policy or intent by the council.
What does it mean to ban superintelligence?In the guests' framing, it means barring the development or delivery of AI systems more capable than humans across all domains within a jurisdiction, unless such a system can be proven safe. Narrow, task-specific AI is not the target.
Can we just turn a dangerous AI off?The guests argue it is not that simple. Citing AI safety researchers, they point out that a system more capable than its overseers becomes progressively harder to monitor and control, which is why they favor prevention over after-the-fact fixes.
How can an ordinary person get involved?Attend a local council meeting during public comment, bring a template resolution, cite credible researchers, and follow up. The guests offered to help residents and officials who want to try.
This is what democratic, community-level action on AI safety can look like. Not panic, and not disruption, but neighbors showing up, asking hard questions, and putting a formal position on the record. John challenged viewers to help pass resolutions in two more cities, and both guests offered to help anyone who wants to try.
If that is you, the path is open. Start local, stay lawful, and build the coalition city by city.
Watch the full conversation on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@theairisknetwork
