The talk behind SB 53, the landmark California invoice attempting to stop AI from constructing nukes

[ad_1] In the case of AI, as California goes, so goes the nation . The largest state within the US by inhabitants can also be the central hub of AI innovation for the complete globe, home to 32 of the world’s top 50 AI companies . That measurement and affect have given the Golden State the burden to develop into a regulatory trailblazer, setting the tone for the remainder of the nation on environmental , labor , and consumer protection rules — and extra lately, AI as properly.

Now, following the dramatic defeat of a proposed federal moratorium on states regulating AI in July, California policymakers see a restricted window of alternative to set the stage for the remainder of the nation’s AI legal guidelines. Within the early hours of Saturday morning, the California State Meeting voted in favor of SB 53 , a invoice that may require transparency stories from the builders of extremely highly effective, “ frontier ” AI fashions. The invoice, which has handed each components of the state legislature, now goes to Gov. Gavin Newsom to both be vetoed or signed into regulation .

The fashions focused characterize the cutting-edge of AI — extraordinarily adept generative techniques that require huge quantities of information and computing energy, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, xAI’s Grok, and Anthropic’s Claude.

AI can offer great advantages, however because the invoice is supposed to deal with, it’s not with out dangers. And whereas there isn't any scarcity of current dangers from points like job displacement and bias , SB 53 focuses on attainable “catastrophic dangers” from AI. Such dangers embody AI-enabled organic weapons assaults and rogue techniques finishing up cyberattacks or different prison exercise that would conceivably deliver down essential infrastructure. Such catastrophic dangers characterize widespread disasters that would plausibly threaten human civilization at native, nationwide, and international ranges. They characterize dangers of the type of AI-driven disasters that haven't but occurred, somewhat than already-realized, extra private harms like AI deepfakes.

Precisely what constitutes a catastrophic danger is up for debate, however SB 53 defines it as a “foreseeable and materials danger” of an occasion that causes greater than 50 casualties or over $1 billion in damages {that a} frontier mannequin performs a significant function in contributing to. How fault is set in follow could be as much as the courts to interpret. It’s laborious to outline catastrophic danger in regulation when the definition is way from settled, however doing so may also help us shield in opposition to each near- and long-term penalties.

By itself, a single state invoice centered on elevated transparency will in all probability not be sufficient to stop devastating cyberattacks and AI-enabled chemical, organic, radiological, and nuclear weapons. However the invoice represents an effort to manage this fast-moving expertise earlier than it outpaces our efforts at oversight.

SB 53 is the third state-level invoice to attempt to particularly concentrate on regulating AI’s catastrophic dangers, after California’s SB 1047, which handed the legislature solely to be vetoed by the governor — and New York’s Responsible AI Safety and Education (RAISE) Act , which lately handed the New York legislature and is now awaiting Gov. Kathy Hochul’s approval.

SB 53, which was launched by state Sen. Scott Wiener in February, requires frontier AI corporations to develop security frameworks that particularly element how they strategy catastrophic danger discount. Earlier than deploying their fashions, corporations must publish security and safety stories. The invoice additionally offers them 15 days to report “essential security incidents” to the California Workplace of Emergency Companies, and establishes whistleblower protections for workers who come ahead about unsafe mannequin deployment that contributes to catastrophic danger. SB 53 goals to carry corporations publicly accountable for his or her AI security commitments, with a monetary penalty as much as $1 million per violation.

“The science of find out how to make AI protected is quickly evolving, and it’s presently troublesome for policymakers to write down prescriptive technical guidelines for the way corporations ought to handle security.”

— Thomas Woodside, co-founder of Safe AI Challenge In some ways, SB 53 is the non secular successor to SB 1047 , additionally launched by Wiener.

Each cowl giant fashions which might be skilled at 10^26 FLOPS, a measurement of very important computing energy used in quite a lot of AI laws as a threshold for important danger, and each payments strengthen whistleblower protections. The place SB 53 departs from SB 1047 is its concentrate on transparency and prevention

Whereas SB 1047 aimed to hold corporations answerable for catastrophic harms brought on by their AI techniques, SB 53 formalizes sharing security frameworks, which many frontier AI corporations, together with Anthropic, already do voluntarily. It focuses squarely on the heavy-hitters, with its guidelines making use of solely to corporations that generate $500 million or extra in gross income.

“The science of find out how to make AI protected is quickly evolving, and it’s presently troublesome for policymakers to write down prescriptive technical guidelines for the way corporations ought to handle security,” mentioned Thomas Woodside, the co-founder of Secure AI Project, an advocacy group that goals to cut back excessive dangers from AI and is a sponsor of the invoice, over e mail. “This mild contact coverage prevents backsliding on commitments and encourages a race to the highest somewhat than a race to the underside.”

A part of the logic of SB 53 is the power to adapt the framework as AI progresses. The invoice authorizes the California Lawyer Normal to vary the definition of a giant developer after January 1, 2027, in response to AI advances.

Proponents of the invoice have been optimistic about its possibilities of being signed by the governor ought to it go the legislature. On the identical day that Gov. Newsom vetoed SB 1047, he commissioned a working group focusing solely on frontier fashions. The ensuing report by the group provided the muse for SB 53. “I'd guess, with roughly 75 % confidence, that SB 53 will probably be signed into regulation by the top of September,” mentioned Dean Ball — former White Home AI coverage adviser, vocal SB 1047 critic, and SB 53 supporter — to Transformer .

However a number of business organizations rallied in opposition, arguing that further compliance regulation could be costly, provided that AI corporations ought to already be incentivized to keep away from catastrophic harms. OpenAI has lobbied in opposition to it, and expertise commerce group Chamber of Progress argues that the invoice would require corporations to file pointless paperwork and unnecessarily stifle innovation.

“These compliance prices are merely the start,” Neil Chilson, head of AI coverage on the Abundance Institute, instructed me over e mail. “The invoice, if handed, would feed California regulators truckloads of firm info that they are going to use to design a compliance industrial complicated.”

Against this, Anthropic enthusiastically endorsed the invoice on Monday. “The query isn’t whether or not we'd like AI governance – it’s whether or not we develop it thoughtfully immediately or reactively tomorrow,” the corporate defined in a weblog submit. “SB 53 affords a stable path towards the previous.” (Disclosure: Vox Media is one in every of a number of publishers which have signed partnership agreements with OpenAI, whereas Future Excellent is funded partly by the BEMC Basis, whose main funder was additionally an early investor in Anthropic. Neither group has editorial enter into our content material.)

The talk over SB 53 ties into broader disagreements about whether or not states or the federal authorities ought to drive AI security regulation. However because the overwhelming majority of those corporations are primarily based in California, and almost all do enterprise there, the state’s laws issues for the complete nation.

“A federally led transparency strategy is way, far, far preferable to the multi-state various,” the place a patchwork of state rules can battle with one another, mentioned Cato Institute expertise coverage fellow Matthew Mittelsteadt in an e mail. However “I like that the invoice has a provision that may enable corporations to defer to a future various federal customary.”

“The pure query is whether or not a federal strategy may even occur,” Mittelsteadt continued. “In my view, the jury is out on that however the chance is way extra probably that some counsel. It’s been lower than 3 years since ChatGPT was launched. That's hardly a lifetime in public coverage.”

However in a time of federal gridlock, frontier AI developments received’t await Washington.

The catastrophic danger divide

The invoice’s concentrate on, and framing of, catastrophic dangers shouldn't be with out controversy.

The thought of catastrophic danger comes from the fields of philosophy and quantitative danger evaluation. Catastrophic dangers are downstream of existential risks , which threaten humanity’s precise survival or else completely scale back our potential as a species. The hope is that if these doomsday eventualities are recognized and ready for, they are often prevented or a minimum of mitigated.

But when existential dangers are clear — the top of the world, or a minimum of as we all know it — what falls beneath the catastrophic danger umbrella, and the easiest way to prioritize these dangers, will depend on who you ask. There are longtermists , individuals centered totally on humanity’s far future, who place a premium on issues like multiplanetary expansion for human survival. They’re usually mainly involved by dangers from rogue AI or extraordinarily deadly pandemics. Neartermists are extra preoccupied with current dangers, like local weather change, mosquito vector-borne illness, or algorithmic bias. These camps can mix into each other — neartermists would additionally wish to keep away from getting hit by asteroids that would wipe out a metropolis, and longtermists don’t dismiss dangers like local weather change — and the easiest way to consider them is like two ends of a spectrum somewhat than a strict binary.

You may consider the AI ethics and AI security frameworks because the near- and longtermism of AI danger, respectively . AI ethics is in regards to the ethical implications of the methods the expertise is deployed, together with issues like algorithmic bias and human rights, within the current. AI security focuses on catastrophic dangers and potential existential threats. However, as Vox’s Julia Longoria reported within the Good Robot series for Unexplainable , there are inter-personal conflicts main these two factions to work in opposition to one another, a lot of which has to do with emphasis. (AI ethics individuals argue that catastrophic danger issues over-hype AI capabilities and ignores its influence on susceptible individuals proper now, whereas AI security individuals fear that if we focus an excessive amount of on the current, we received’t have methods to mitigate larger-scale issues down the road.)

However behind the query of close to versus long-term dangers lies one other one: what, precisely, constitutes a catastrophic danger?

SB 53 initially set the usual for catastrophic danger at 100 somewhat than 50 casualties — much like New York’s RAISE Act — earlier than halving the brink in an modification to the invoice. Whereas the typical particular person may contemplate, say, many individuals pushed to suicide after interacting with AI chatbots to be catastrophic, such a danger is exterior of the invoice’s scope. (The California State Meeting simply passed a separate invoice to manage AI companion chatbots by stopping them from collaborating in discussions about suicidal ideation or sexually specific materials.)

SB 53 focuses squarely on harms from “expert-level” frontier AI mannequin help in growing or deploying chemical, organic, radiological, and nuclear weapons; committing crimes like cyberattacks or fraud; and “lack of management” eventualities the place AIs go rogue, behaving deceptively to keep away from being shut down and replicating themselves with out human oversight. For instance, an AI mannequin could possibly be used to information the creation of a brand new lethal virus that infects hundreds of thousands and kneecaps the worldwide economic system.

“The 50 to 100 deaths or a billion {dollars} in property harm is only a proxy to seize actually widespread and substantial influence,” mentioned Scott Singer, lead creator of the California Report for Frontier AI Policy , which helped inform the idea of the invoice. “We do have a look at like AI-enabled or AI probably [caused] or correlated suicide. I believe that’s like a really severe set of points that calls for policymaker consideration, however I don’t suppose it’s the core of what this invoice is attempting to deal with.”

Transparency is useful in stopping such catastrophes as a result of it might assist elevate the alarm earlier than issues get out of hand, permitting AI builders to appropriate course. And within the occasion that such efforts fail to stop a mass casualty incident, enhanced security transparency may also help regulation enforcement and the courts determine what went fallacious. The problem there may be that it may be troublesome to find out how a lot a mannequin is accountable for a particular consequence, Irene Solaiman, the chief coverage officer at Hugging Face , a collaboration platform for AI builders, instructed me over e mail.

“These dangers are coming and we ought to be prepared for them and have transparency into what the businesses are doing,” mentioned Adam Billen, the vp of public coverage at Encode, a corporation that advocates for accountable AI management and security. (Encode is one other sponsor of SB 53.) “However we don’t know precisely what we’re going to wish to do as soon as the dangers themselves seem. However proper now, when these issues aren’t occurring at a big scale, it is smart to be type of centered on transparency.”

Nevertheless, a transparency-focused invoice like SB 53 is inadequate for addressing already-existing harms. After we already know one thing is an issue, the main target ought to be on mitigating it.

“Perhaps 4 years in the past, if we had handed some type of transparency laws like SB 53 however centered on these harms, we'd have had some warning indicators and been in a position to intervene earlier than the widespread harms to youngsters began occurring,” Billen mentioned. “We’re attempting to type of appropriate that mistake on these issues and get some type of forward-facing details about what’s occurring earlier than issues get loopy, mainly.”

SB 53 dangers being each overly slender and unclearly scoped. We've got not but confronted these catastrophic harms from frontier AI fashions, and essentially the most devastating dangers may take us solely abruptly. We don’t know what we don’t know.

It’s additionally definitely attainable that fashions skilled under 10^26 FLOPS, which aren’t coated by SB 53, have the potential to trigger catastrophic hurt beneath the invoice’s definition. The EU AI Act units the threshold for “systemic danger” on the smaller 10^25 FLOPS, and there’s disagreement in regards to the utility of computational energy as a regulatory customary in any respect, particularly as fashions develop into extra environment friendly.

Because it stands proper now, SB 53 occupies a special area of interest from payments centered on regulating AI use in psychological healthcare or knowledge privateness, reflecting its authors’ want to not step on the toes of different laws or chunk off greater than it might fairly chew. However Chilson, the Abundance Institute’s head of AI coverage, is a part of a camp that sees SB 53’s concentrate on catastrophic hurt as a “distraction” from the actual near-term advantages and issues, like AI’s potential to speed up the tempo of scientific analysis or create nonconsensual deepfake imagery, respectively.

That mentioned, deepfakes may definitely trigger catastrophic hurt. For example, think about a hyper-realistic deepfake impersonating a financial institution worker to commit fraud at a multibillion-dollar scale, mentioned Nathan Calvin, the vp of state affairs and basic counsel at Encode. “I do suppose a few of the strains between these items in follow generally is a bit blurry, and I believe in some methods…that's not essentially a nasty factor,” he instructed me.

It could possibly be that the ideological debate round what qualifies as catastrophic dangers, and whether or not that’s worthy of our legislative consideration, is simply noise. The invoice is meant to manage AI earlier than the proverbial horse is out of the barn. The common particular person isn’t going to fret in regards to the probability of AI sparking nuclear warfare or organic weapons assaults, however they do take into consideration how algorithmic bias may have an effect on their lives within the current. However in attempting to stop the worst-case eventualities, maybe we are able to additionally keep away from the “smaller,” nearer harms. In the event that they’re efficient, forward-facing security provisions designed to stop mass casualty occasions may even make AI safer for people.

If Gov. Newsom indicators SB 53 into regulation, it may encourage different state makes an attempt at AI regulation by way of an analogous framework, and finally encourage federal AI security laws to maneuver ahead.

How we take into consideration danger issues as a result of it determines the place we focus our efforts on prevention. I’m a agency believer within the worth of defining your phrases, in regulation and debate. If we’re not on the identical web page about what we imply after we discuss danger, we are able to’t have an actual dialog.

Replace, September 13, 2025, 11:55 am ET: This story was initially revealed on September 12 and has been up to date to mirror the end result of the California State Meeting vote.

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