In relation to 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 whole globe, house to 32 of the world’s high 50 AI firms. That dimension 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 client safety rules — and extra just 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 will require transparency experiences from the builders of extremely highly effective, “frontier” AI fashions. The invoice, which has handed each elements of the state legislature, now goes to Gov. Gavin Newsom to both be vetoed or signed into regulation.
The fashions focused signify the cutting-edge of AI — extraordinarily adept generative programs that require large quantities of information and computing energy, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, xAI’s Grok, and Anthropic’s Claude.
AI can supply great advantages, however because the invoice is supposed to handle, it’s not with out dangers. And whereas there isn’t a scarcity of present dangers from points like job displacement and bias, SB 53 focuses on potential “catastrophic dangers” from AI. Such dangers embrace AI-enabled organic weapons assaults and rogue programs finishing up cyberattacks or different legal exercise that might conceivably carry down important infrastructure. Such catastrophic dangers signify widespread disasters that might plausibly threaten human civilization at native, nationwide, and world ranges. They signify dangers of the sort of AI-driven disasters that haven’t but occurred, relatively than already-realized, extra private harms like AI deepfakes.
Precisely what constitutes a catastrophic threat is up for debate, however SB 53 defines it as a “foreseeable and materials threat” 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 decided in follow could be as much as the courts to interpret. It’s arduous to outline catastrophic threat in regulation when the definition is way from settled, however doing so may also help us shield towards each near- and long-term penalties.
By itself, a single state invoice centered on elevated transparency will most likely not be sufficient to stop devastating cyberattacks and AI-enabled chemical, organic, radiological, and nuclear weapons. However the invoice represents an effort to control this fast-moving know-how 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 Accountable AI Security and Training (RAISE) Act, which just 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 firms to develop security frameworks that particularly element how they strategy catastrophic threat discount. Earlier than deploying their fashions, firms must publish security and safety experiences. The invoice additionally offers them 15 days to report “important security incidents” to the California Workplace of Emergency Providers, and establishes whistleblower protections for workers who come ahead about unsafe mannequin deployment that contributes to catastrophic threat. SB 53 goals to carry firms publicly accountable for his or her AI security commitments, with a monetary penalty as much as $1 million per violation.
“The science of easy methods to make AI protected is quickly evolving, and it’s at the moment troublesome for policymakers to put in writing prescriptive technical guidelines for the way firms ought to handle security.”
— Thomas Woodside, co-founder of Safe AI Mission
In some ways, SB 53 is the religious successor to SB 1047, additionally launched by Wiener.
Each cowl massive fashions which are skilled at 10^26 FLOPS, a measurement of very vital computing energy used in a wide range of AI laws as a threshold for vital threat, 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 maintain firms responsible for catastrophic harms brought on by their AI programs, SB 53 formalizes sharing security frameworks, which many frontier AI firms, together with Anthropic, already do voluntarily. It focuses squarely on the heavy-hitters, with its guidelines making use of solely to firms that generate $500 million or extra in gross income.
“The science of easy methods to make AI protected is quickly evolving, and it’s at the moment troublesome for policymakers to put in writing prescriptive technical guidelines for the way firms ought to handle security,” mentioned Thomas Woodside, the co-founder of Safe AI Mission, an advocacy group that goals to scale 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 relatively than a race to the underside.”
A part of the logic of SB 53 is the flexibility to adapt the framework as AI progresses. The invoice authorizes the California Legal professional Normal to alter the definition of a giant developer after January 1, 2027, in response to AI advances.
Proponents of the invoice have been optimistic about its probabilities 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 supplied the inspiration for SB 53. “I might guess, with roughly 75 p.c 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 trade organizations rallied in opposition, arguing that extra compliance regulation could be costly, on condition that AI firms ought to already be incentivized to keep away from catastrophic harms. OpenAI has lobbied towards it, and know-how commerce group Chamber of Progress argues that the invoice would require firms 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, advised me over e-mail. “The invoice, if handed, would feed California regulators truckloads of firm data that they may use to design a compliance industrial advanced.”
In contrast, 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 right now or reactively tomorrow,” the corporate defined in a weblog submit. “SB 53 presents a strong path towards the previous.” (Disclosure: Vox Media is one in all a number of publishers which have signed partnership agreements with OpenAI, whereas Future Excellent is funded partially 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 for the reason that overwhelming majority of those firms are primarily based in California, and practically all do enterprise there, the state’s laws issues for the whole 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 know-how coverage fellow Matthew Mittelsteadt in an e-mail. However “I like that the invoice has a provision that will enable firms 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 risk is way extra doubtless that some recommend. 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 look forward to Washington.
The catastrophic threat divide
The invoice’s concentrate on, and framing of, catastrophic dangers will not be with out controversy.
The thought of catastrophic threat comes from the fields of philosophy and quantitative threat evaluation. Catastrophic dangers are downstream of existential dangers, which threaten humanity’s precise survival or else completely scale back our potential as a species. The hope is that if these doomsday situations 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 below the catastrophic threat umbrella, and one of the best ways to prioritize these dangers, relies on who you ask. There are longtermists, folks centered totally on humanity’s far future, who place a premium on issues like multiplanetary growth for human survival. They’re typically mainly involved by dangers from rogue AI or extraordinarily deadly pandemics. Neartermists are extra preoccupied with present 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 might wipe out a metropolis, and longtermists don’t dismiss dangers like local weather change — and one of the best ways to consider them is like two ends of a spectrum relatively than a strict binary.
You may consider the AI ethics and AI security frameworks because the near- and longtermism of AI threat, respectively. AI ethics is concerning the ethical implications of the methods the know-how 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 Robotic sequence for Unexplainable, there are inter-personal conflicts main these two factions to work towards one another, a lot of which has to do with emphasis. (AI ethics folks argue that catastrophic threat issues over-hype AI capabilities and ignores its impression on susceptible folks proper now, whereas AI security folks 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 threat?
SB 53 initially set the usual for catastrophic threat at 100 relatively than 50 casualties — just 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 threat is outdoors of the invoice’s scope. (The California State Meeting simply handed a separate invoice to control AI companion chatbots by stopping them from taking part in discussions about suicidal ideation or sexually express materials.)
SB 53 focuses squarely on harms from “expert-level” frontier AI mannequin help in creating or deploying chemical, organic, radiological, and nuclear weapons; committing crimes like cyberattacks or fraud; and “lack of management” situations 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 may very well 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 injury is only a proxy to seize actually widespread and substantial impression,” mentioned Scott Singer, lead creator of the California Report for Frontier AI Coverage, which helped inform the idea of the invoice. “We do take a look at like AI-enabled or AI doubtlessly [caused] or correlated suicide. I feel that’s like a really critical set of points that calls for policymaker consideration, however I don’t assume it’s the core of what this invoice is attempting to handle.”
Transparency is useful in stopping such catastrophes as a result of it will possibly assist increase the alarm earlier than issues get out of hand, permitting AI builders to right 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 work out what went incorrect. The problem there’s that it may be troublesome to find out how a lot a mannequin is accountable for a particular final result, Irene Solaiman, the chief coverage officer at Hugging Face, a collaboration platform for AI builders, advised me over e-mail.
“These dangers are coming and we must be prepared for them and have transparency into what the businesses are doing,” mentioned Adam Billen, the vice chairman 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 want to do as soon as the dangers themselves seem. However proper now, when these issues aren’t taking place at a big scale, it is smart to be type of centered on transparency.”
Nonetheless, 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 focus must 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 capable of intervene earlier than the widespread harms to children began taking place,” Billen mentioned. “We’re attempting to sort of right that mistake on these issues and get some type of forward-facing details about what’s taking place earlier than issues get loopy, mainly.”
SB 53 dangers being each overly slim and unclearly scoped. We’ve got not but confronted these catastrophic harms from frontier AI fashions, and probably the most devastating dangers may take us solely unexpectedly. We don’t know what we don’t know.
It’s additionally actually potential that fashions skilled under 10^26 FLOPS, which aren’t coated by SB 53, have the potential to trigger catastrophic hurt below the invoice’s definition. The EU AI Act units the threshold for “systemic threat” on the smaller 10^25 FLOPS, and there’s disagreement concerning 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 distinct area of interest from payments centered on regulating AI use in psychological healthcare or information privateness, reflecting its authors’ need to not step on the toes of different laws or chew off greater than it will possibly 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 might actually trigger catastrophic hurt. As an illustration, think about a hyper-realistic deepfake impersonating a financial institution worker to commit fraud at a multibillion-dollar scale, mentioned Nathan Calvin, the vice chairman of state affairs and common counsel at Encode. “I do assume a number of the traces between this stuff in follow generally is a bit blurry, and I feel in some methods…that isn’t essentially a nasty factor,” he advised me.
It may very well 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 control AI earlier than the proverbial horse is out of the barn. The typical particular person isn’t going to fret concerning 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 situations, maybe we will 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 will even make AI safer for people.
If Gov. Newsom indicators SB 53 into regulation, it might encourage different state makes an attempt at AI regulation via an identical framework, and ultimately encourage federal AI security laws to maneuver ahead.
How we take into consideration threat 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 once we speak about threat, we will’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 replicate the result of the California State Meeting vote.
