ControlAI’s Connor Leahy on why superintelligence is ‘not a weapon, it’s an adversary’

Connor Leahy, U.S. Executive Director of nonprofit ControlAI, argues that superintelligent AI should be treated as an adversary rather than a weapon, and advocates for halting its development altogether, citing recent safety incidents such as OpenAI's Hugging Face breach. Leahy's stance is gaining legislative support, including the Sanders-Casar 'Ban Superintelligence Act' in the U.S. and parallel U.K. legislation, as he warns that the point of no return is when AI can improve itself, creating a runaway cycle.

AI companies have been talking about superintelligent AI like it’s inevitable, but recent safety incidents https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/04/openais-rogue-agents-keep-escaping-with-no-formal-process-to-investigate-them/ like OpenAI’s Hugging Face breach https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/26/openai-releases-its-official-report-on-the-hugging-face-breach/ are demonstrating the potential dangers of deploying AI systems that are more capable than humans. So what happens when we can’t reliably control what these systems do? On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity https://techcrunch.com/podcasts/equity/ podcast, Rebecca Bellan is joined by Connor Leahy https://www.linkedin.com/in/connor-j-leahy/ , an AI researcher, entrepreneur, and now the U.S. Executive Director of nonprofit ControlAI https://controlai.org/ , which is pushing for a far more radical approach to AI safety: stopping companies from developing superintelligence altogether. Leahy explains why he thinks the risks have become too great to manage through alignment and containment alone, and how what sounded far-fetched six months ago is now being backed by a wave of new legislation. Listen to the full episode to hear more about: - His take on the Sanders-Casar “Ban Superintelligence Act,” https://www.sanders.senate.gov/press-releases/news-sanders-casar-introduce-legislation-to-ban-artificial-superintelligence-and-temporarily-pause-advanced-ai-development/ the parallel legislation in the U.K. that Control AI advised on, and why he thinks the U.S. bill may go further than necessary. - How he views frontier AI labs less as companies simply chasing returns and more as political actors, and what that means for the trillions of dollars being poured into data center buildouts. - Why Leahy thinks the real point of no return is when AI can build better AI, creating a potentially runaway cycle of self-improvement - The case for international “trust but verify” agreements, and why Leahy thinks it isn’t actually in China’s interest to build superintelligence. Subscribe to Equity on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@TechCrunch , Apple Podcasts https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id1215439780 , Overcast https://overcast.fm/itunes1215439780/equity , Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/5IEYLip3eDppcOmy5DmphC?si=rZDFHv2sQUul g94iCRgpQ and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X https://twitter.com/EquityPod and Threads https://www.threads.net/@equitypod , at @EquityPod.