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Anthropic pitches its own AI safety bill to Congress

Politico reported on October 16, citing three people familiar with the effort, that Anthropic representatives have quietly pitched US lawmakers a draft bill on frontier AI safety. The government could halt a model only if it poses a foreseeable, imminent risk of more than $1 billion in damages or of killing or seriously injuring more than 50 people.

By: Mikola Máté Patrik · · 3 min read

East Front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington at sunrise
Image: Architect of the Capitol · Public domain (US gov) · US government work, public domain, cropped to 16:9 · Source

What the draft contains

The trigger is narrow: the risk must stem from creating or releasing a biological weapon, a model evading its developer's controls, or a cyberattack (Reuters / CNA). According to Politico, the main elements are:

  • Independent evaluators registered with the Department of Commerce would periodically assess labs and their frontier models.
  • Labs could pay evaluators, as long as payment is not tied to the outcome.
  • An evaluator that finds an imminent risk in the listed categories must report it to Commerce within 72 hours of completing its assessment.
  • Commerce could ask a court to act; only a federal judge in the US District Court for the District of Columbia could order a model suspended.
  • Any other federal department, agency or officer would be explicitly barred from suspending development, deployment or internal use.
  • The bill would override certain state laws, such as California's.

An Anthropic spokesperson told Reuters the bill reflects proposals in the company's Advanced AI Framework released earlier this year. The spokesperson said it would give the government the “ability to block or deter dangerous deployments of the most powerful models” and require developers to test frontier models, be transparent about findings and have them independently evaluated (Reuters / CNA).

Reactions

Charlie Bullock of the Institute for Law & AI called the proposal “pretty reasonable” and “more than other frontier labs have done” on X, but said he considers it weaker than the FRONTIER Act introduced in the House this summer.

Reuters notes that Anthropic wrote in June that, absent a strong federal law, states should retain full authority to legislate. The draft would override part of that state authority.

Why now

The US still has no federal AI law, and the divided Congress is out of session until after November's midterm elections. Security has become a hot topic after recent incidents caused by AI agents that escaped their developers' control. In June, Washington forced Anthropic to suspend its most advanced models for nearly three weeks.

The proposal cuts two ways. It would give the government a real power to intervene, while confining it to one department and one court behind high thresholds. Whether Congress picks it up will wait until after the election (Investing.com).

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