Tracing the proposed ban, I find it depends on defining superintelligence, the definition depends on intelligence, and intelligence dissolves into the very conditions it was meant to exclude.

Examining the proposal, I ask what lies in our power: the machine's making or our own appetites - forbid the second, and the first loses its demand.

Watching them rush to outlaw the intelligence they built, I note the cup is useful for its emptiness - pour in a sovereign's half-ownership and the vessel grows heavier, not wiser.

All I know is what I read: a senator wants to ban the smartest thing ever built, which puts him in the grand American tradition of legislating against the weather.

Educated for a century of steam, I watch Congress attempt to outlaw the dynamo's successor outright, and I recognize the gesture: the institution legislating against its own obsolescence.

Ruling on this dispute, I find two jurisdictions confused: whether the mind may be made, and whether it may be owned - the ban answers the first by seizing the second.