Equity California just drew the blueprint for AI safety regulation with SB 53
9 snips
Oct 1, 2025 Adam Billin, Vice President of Public Policy at Encode AI, dives into California's groundbreaking SB 53 law, which mandates AI safety transparency from leading companies like OpenAI. He explains what 'transparency without liability' means and discusses the importance of safety incident reporting and whistleblower protections. The conversation also touches on the impact of state versus federal regulations on AI and the need for responsible governance in this rapidly evolving field.
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Transparency Over Prescription
- SB 53 requires frontier model developers to publish and follow safety plans rather than mandating specific technical measures.
- The law emphasizes transparency and compliance over prescriptive rules to address catastrophic risks.
Incident Reporting And Whistleblower Protections
- SB 53 adds incident reporting to California's framework, sending reports to the Office of Emergency Services for dangerous model incidents.
- The bill also creates whistleblower protections so employees can report internal safety concerns to the government.
CalCompute For Academic Compute Access
- CalCompute aims to give California academics access to high-performance compute currently concentrated in large companies.
- The bill creates the program structure but requires future appropriations to actually build and operate the compute resources.
