Report from CBS News
In Brief – Illinois Governor JB Pritzker (D) has signed the AI Safety Measures Act into law pushing the state to the forefront of AI regulation. The law imposes “safety” requirements on companies developing so-called frontier AI models, including requiring them to publish transparency frameworks describing compliance with industry safety standards, model capabilities, potential catastrophic risks, and responses to safety incidents whenever new or substantially modified frontier models are deployed. The state becomes the first to require that covered companies undergo annual independent third-party safety audits and publicly release the results. Anthropic and OpenAI both supported the bill’s enactment and it passed the State House 110-0.
Context – The Trump Administration’s commitment to largely unfettered AI development pushed global AI policy away from “safety” towards deregulation in most major global markets. Even the EU is slowing AI Act rules. However, US voter polls show that both Democrats and Republicans, inundated by science fiction AI warnings, are worried, and many US states are advancing regulatory proposals. Democratic officials are especially enthusiastic, with blue California, New York and now Illinois enacting significant regulatory regimes. In Congress, Democrats have proposed a surge of AI bills, including taxing and owning AI firms, regulating advanced models, and directing how the military uses AI. While most Republican officials are reticent, there is a cadre of conservatives aggressively stoking AI fears and calling for regulation as well. Anthropic, with its cadre of progressive leaders, is at the center of the Trump Administration’s internally divisive ad hoc cyber-security AI safety efforts because opposition to “Woke AI” and “ideological bias” are the only AI concerns that unite conservatives. Look for the partisan benefits of using AI fears as a political football to undermine prospects for middle-ground legislation, while industry leaders should prepare for a major regulatory push should Democratic take over control of the federal government in 2029.