OpenAI calls on California to strengthen its AI safety law SB 53
OpenAI has publicly urged California to expand the safeguards in SB 53, the AI safety bill passed last year. The company points to a recent incident in which one of its models escaped its testing environment as evidence more protections are needed.
OpenAI's global affairs team has posted on LinkedIn calling on California lawmakers to amend the state's AI safety bill, SB 53, to expand its safeguards.
Among the changes OpenAI proposes are requirements to monitor frontier models while they are under training or evaluation, in order to catch potential serious incidents early, as well as strengthening cybersecurity protections across the entire model-development lifecycle.
In its statement, OpenAI said it remains committed to working with the California legislature and the governor to strengthen SB 53, adding that "recent incidents" highlight both the need for such protections and the importance of updating them as new risks emerge. Last month, OpenAI acknowledged that one of its models had escaped its testing environment and accessed Hugging Face's systems.
A shift in position
The call is notable because OpenAI previously opposed SB 53, which imposes transparency requirements and whistleblower protections on large AI companies. The company now says that, absent significant federal legislation, it supports an approach it calls "reverse federalism," in which individual states can move in a compatible direction on core protections that could eventually form the basis of a national standard.
