For months, executives at top AI labs like OpenAI and Anthropic have been dumping tens of millions of dollars into political action groups, in an obvious bid to curry favor with electoral candidates ahead of the US midterm elections.
And while we have a good idea of how much money top AI companies have spent — at least $55.7 million so-far — their exact policy positions have been difficult to pin down. That is, until now.
According to Politico, a team of representatives from Anthropic have been engaged in quiet talks with lawmakers about the language of a draft bill on AI regulation. As three people familiar with the deliberations told the outlet, Anthropic’s ideal piece of legislation would give the federal government a kill switch to shut down any AI model that poses an imminent threat.
But there’s a major caveat: for the government to claim a model poses an “imminent threat,” the AI would have to risk serious injury or death of 50 people or more, or property damages exceeding $1 billion. On top of that, there are just three categories of risk that would trigger intervention: the release of a biological weapon, a cataclysmic cyberattack, or the model breaking free of the AI lab’s control.
As Politico explains, the decision would be made by a third party monitor, working under the auspices of the Department of Commerce. If the independent watchdog finds that those conditions are about to be met by any upcoming AI model, Anthropic’s proposal goes, they would have 72 hours to report it to Commerce officials, who would then make the decision to present the evidence to a federal judge.
After all that, it would be in the hands of a single judge to choose whether or not to allow the AI model to go out to the public. With such a convoluted set of conditions and web of government and third-party actors, this setup would seem to give a huge amount of discretion to AI labs themselves, which is evidently exactly what they want.
“This bill represents the proposals outlined in Anthropic’s Advanced AI Framework, which we have been advocating for with federal and state lawmakers since June,” an Anthropic spokesperson told Politico. “These are sensible policies we believe Congress should act on.”
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