On Capitol Hill, a new legislative effort is taking shape — one that asks not merely how artificial intelligence might inconvenience us, but how it might undo us. US senators are drafting requirements that would compel the architects of the most powerful AI systems to formally commit to preventing catastrophic outcomes, moving the governance conversation from the realm of voluntary pledges into the domain of legal obligation. It is a signal that the human story of technological ambition has reached a threshold where even those who make the laws feel the ground shifting beneath them.