WASHINGTON, D.C. — Senator Bernie Sanders will introduce the "Artificial Intelligence Data Center Moratorium Act" on Wednesday to impose a national moratorium on data center construction until legislation is enacted that safeguards the public from artificial intelligence. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will introduce a similar bill in the House in the coming weeks.

The bill would impose an open-ended moratorium on the construction or upgrading of new and existing data centers used specifically for artificial intelligence, defined as facilities with an energy load above 20 megawatts. The moratorium will end only when laws are enacted to prevent data centers from contributing to climate change, harming the environment, and raising electricity bills.

The legislation states that tech companies must ensure that wealth generated from artificial intelligence is shared with the people of the United States. The bill also forbids the export of computing hardware, including semiconductor chips, to any country that does not have similar AI safety laws.

The bill specifies that new AI products must undergo governmental review and approval before being deployed and that policies must be in place to prevent job displacement due to artificial intelligence. The bill names tech executives Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Sam Altman, and Dario Amodei as individuals who have profited greatly from artificial intelligence and sounded alarms about how quickly the technology could change society.

In December, Sanders became the first national politician to call for a moratorium on data centers. A coalition of more than 230 progressive groups sent a letter to Congress that same month calling for a national moratorium on data centers.

Cy McNeill, Senior Director of Federal Affairs at the Data Center Coalition, said that data centers power modern life. McNeill said that a moratorium risks rationing access to digital services, impairs global competitiveness, and will have substantial impacts on Americans' daily lives. "A moratorium would limit internet capacity, slow critical services, eliminate hundreds of thousands of high-wage jobs, drain billions in local tax revenue, and raise costs for American families and small businesses," McNeill said.

The White House said that Congress should preempt state AI laws it views as overly burdensome and laid out a broad framework for addressing concerns about AI without curbing growth or innovation in the sector. In March, representatives from Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, and Google gathered at the White House to sign a nonbinding agreement intended to make data centers pay the full cost of their energy and infrastructure and protect consumers from rate hikes.

At least a dozen state legislatures in Georgia, Maryland, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Vermont, Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming have introduced state-level moratoriums on data center development this year. Opposition to rising power prices has played a role in Democratic wins in elections in states including Georgia and Virginia.