California State Senator Scott Wiener on Wednesday launched new amendments to his newest invoice, SB 53, that may require the world’s largest AI corporations to publish security and safety protocols and situation studies when security incidents happen.
If signed into regulation, California can be the primary state to impose significant transparency necessities onto main AI builders, seemingly together with OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and xAI.
Senator Wiener’s earlier AI invoice, SB 1047, included comparable necessities for AI mannequin builders to publish security studies. Nevertheless, Silicon Valley fought ferociously in opposition to that invoice, and it was finally vetoed by Governor Gavin Newsom. California’s governor then known as for a gaggle of AI leaders — together with the main Stanford researcher and co-founder of World Labs, Fei-Fei Li — to type a coverage group and set objectives for the state’s AI security efforts.
California’s AI coverage group just lately revealed their closing suggestions, citing a necessity for “necessities on trade to publish details about their methods” with the intention to set up a “strong and clear proof setting.” Senator Wiener’s workplace stated in a press launch that SB 53’s amendments have been closely influenced by this report.
“The invoice continues to be a piece in progress, and I look ahead to working with all stakeholders within the coming weeks to refine this proposal into probably the most scientific and honest regulation it may be,” Senator Wiener stated within the launch.
SB 53 goals to strike a steadiness that Governor Newsom claimed SB 1047 failed to realize — ideally, creating significant transparency necessities for the biggest AI builders with out thwarting the fast development of California’s AI trade.
“These are considerations that my group and others have been speaking about for some time,” stated Nathan Calvin, VP of State Affairs for the nonprofit AI security group, Encode, in an interview with TechCrunch. “Having corporations clarify to the general public and authorities what measures they’re taking to handle these dangers looks like a naked minimal, affordable step to take.”
The invoice additionally creates whistleblower protections for workers of AI labs who imagine their firm’s expertise poses a “vital threat” to society — outlined within the invoice as contributing to the loss of life or damage of greater than 100 folks, or greater than $1 billion in injury.
Moreover, the invoice goals to create CalCompute, a public cloud computing cluster to help startups and researchers growing large-scale AI.
In contrast to SB 1047, Senator Wiener’s new invoice doesn’t make AI mannequin builders responsible for the harms of their AI fashions. SB 53 was additionally designed to not pose a burden on startups and researchers that fine-tune AI fashions from main AI builders, or use open supply fashions.
With the brand new amendments, SB 53 is now headed to the California State Meeting Committee on Privateness and Shopper Safety for approval. Ought to it cross there, the invoice may even must cross via a number of different legislative our bodies earlier than reaching Governor Newsom’s desk.
On the opposite facet of the U.S., New York Governor Kathy Hochul is now contemplating an analogous AI security invoice, the RAISE Act, which might additionally require giant AI builders to publish security and safety studies.
The destiny of state AI legal guidelines just like the RAISE Act and SB 53 have been briefly in jeopardy as federal lawmakers thought-about a 10-year AI moratorium on state AI regulation — an try and restrict a “patchwork” of AI legal guidelines that corporations must navigate. Nevertheless, that proposal failed in a 99-1 Senate vote earlier in July.
“Making certain AI is developed safely shouldn’t be controversial — it must be foundational,” stated Geoff Ralston, the previous president of Y Combinator, in an announcement to TechCrunch. “Congress must be main, demanding transparency and accountability from the businesses constructing frontier fashions. However with no critical federal motion in sight, states should step up. California’s SB 53 is a considerate, well-structured instance of state management.”
Up up to now, lawmakers have did not get AI corporations on board with state-mandated transparency necessities. Anthropic has broadly endorsed the necessity for elevated transparency into AI corporations, and even expressed modest optimism concerning the suggestions from California’s AI coverage group. However corporations resembling OpenAI, Google, and Meta have been extra resistant to those efforts.
Main AI mannequin builders sometimes publish security studies for his or her AI fashions, however they’ve been much less constant in current months. Google, for instance, determined to not publish a security report for its most superior AI mannequin ever launched, Gemini 2.5 Professional, till months after it was made out there. OpenAI additionally determined to not publish a security report for its GPT-4.1 mannequin. Later, a third-party examine got here out that urged it might be much less aligned than earlier AI fashions.
SB 53 represents a toned-down model of earlier AI security payments, however it nonetheless may drive AI corporations to publish extra data than they do as we speak. For now, they’ll be watching carefully as Senator Wiener as soon as once more exams these boundaries.
