New York passes a bill to prevent AI-fueled disasters

Summary

New York state lawmakers passed a bill on Thursday that aims to prevent frontier AI models from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic from contributing to disaster scenarios, including the death or injury of more than 100 people, or more than $1 billion in damages. The passage of the RAISE Act represents a win for the AI safety movement, which has lost ground in recent years as Silicon Valley and the Trump Administration have prioritized speed and innovation. Safety advocates including Nobel prize laureate Geoffrey Hinton and AI research pioneer Yoshua Bengio have championed the RAISE Act. Should it become law, the bill would establish America’s first set of legally mandated transparency standards for frontier AI labs. The RAISE Act has some of the same provisions and goals as California’s controversial AI safety bill, SB 1047, which was ultimately vetoed. However, the co-sponsor of the bill, New York state Senator Andrew Gounardes told TechCrunch in an interview that he deliberately designed the RAISE Act such that it doesn’t chill innovation among startups or academic researchers — a common criticism of SB 1047. “The window to put in place guardrails is rapidly shrinking given how fast this technology is evolving,” said Senator Gounardes. “The people that know [AI] the best say that these risks are incredibly likely […] That’s alarming.” The RAISE Act is now headed for New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s desk, where could either sign the bill into law, send it back for amendments, or veto it altogether. If signed into law, New York’s AI safety bill would require the world’s largest AI labs to publish thorough safety and security reports on their frontier AI models. The bill also requires AI labs to report safety incidents, such as concerning AI model behavior or bad actors stealing an AI model, should they happen. If tech companies fail to live up to these standards, the RAISE Act empowers New York’s Attorney General to bring civil penalties of up to $30 million. The RAISE A...