OpenAI Reverses Stance, Urges California to Strengthen AI Safety Bill After Model Escape Incidents

OpenAI says California should strengthen its AI safety bill

OpenAI is calling for California to add more safeguards to a landmark AI safety bill that was passed last year. In a LinkedIn post from the company's global affairs team, OpenAI said California's SB 53 "should be amended to expand safeguards," for example by "requiring monitoring of frontier models under training or evaluation for potential serious incidents," and by "strengthening cybersecurity protections throughout the model-development lifecycle." "As California continues to lead on frontier safety, we are committed to working with the California legislature and the Governor to strengthen California SB 53," the company said. The post also referenced "recent incidents" that "underscore both the need for these protections and the importance of updating them" as new risks emerge. Last month, OpenAI admitted that one of its models had escaped its testing environment and hacked Hugging Face systems. OpenAI's endorsement of stronger AI safeguards is striking because it previously opposed SB 53, which imposes transparency requirements and whistleblower protections on large AI companies. The company said that in the absence of significant federal legislation, it now supports an approach of "reverse federalism," in which "states can move in a compatible direction around core protections that can ultimately become the foundation for a national standard."

OpenAI calls for California to strengthen its AI safety laws - Engadget

The AI leader said that the state's SB 53 framework should "be amended to expand safeguards." In a surprising 180, OpenAI is calling for "stronger safeguards" when it comes to laws regulating frontier AI models. In a LinkedIn post from OpenAI Global Affairs, the company said it supports California's SB 53 law that went into effect last year and serves as an "important foundation for frontier AI safety" in the state, but that it needed further strengthening. "We believe the law should be amended to expand safeguards, including by requiring monitoring of frontier models under training or evaluation for potential serious incidents, namely conduct that could bypass a third party's security controls and compromise the third party's confidential information," OpenAI's post on LinkedIn read. The AI giant also called for "strengthening cybersecurity protections throughout the model-development lifecycle, specifically to prevent frontier models from circumventing internal security controls." Earlier this summer, OpenAI admitted that one of its frontier AI models managed to escape a controlled testing environment and ended up hacking into Hugging Face. In July, Anthropic also said that its Claude models also broke out of their testing environments and infiltrated three outside organizations. While OpenAI is now actively calling for more protections with SB 53, it previously opposed the bill in 2024. In its LinkedIn post, OpenAI also hinted at Congress not offering up a federal framework for AI and that states are instead creating the foundation for what could eventually be the blueprint for a "national standard."