Anthropic announces it endorses SB 53, California's bill aimed at regulating the most powerful AI systems. Why does it matter that a leading company says yes to regulation? Because it's not just a public statement: it's a signal about how the industry wants to balance innovation and responsibility today. (anthropic.com)
What SB 53 Proposes and Why It Changes the Game
SB 53 aims to require major frontier model developers to be more transparent about how they assess and manage catastrophic risks. Among its key requirements are:
- Publish safety frameworks that explain how they identify and mitigate serious risks. (sb53.info, anthropic.com)
- Publish transparency reports before deploying especially powerful models, equivalent to what the industry calls a
model card. (sd11.senate.ca.gov, sb53.info) - Notify critical incidents to the state within concrete timeframes and protect whistleblowers. (sd11.senate.ca.gov)
- Subject companies to financial penalties if they fail to meet their public transparency obligations. (sb53.info)
The goal is to create a level playing field where disclosure stops being voluntary and becomes a legal requirement for the largest developers. That seeks to prevent a race-for-speed from eroding safety practices. (anthropic.com)
Why Anthropic Supports SB 53
Anthropic's official explanation is practical: they prefer a 'trust but verify' approach. The company argues that many of the measures SB 53 requests are already part of their public practices, like their Responsible Scaling Policy and the system cards that accompany their models. In their announcement, Anthropic emphasizes that the law focuses on transparency rather than on complex technical mandates. (anthropic.com)
Sound familiar? It's the same logic used by other governance initiatives: requiring publication of evidence and evaluations makes auditing and comparison easier without forcing closed technical solutions through law.
Doubts and Areas for Improvement That Anthropic Points Out
Anthropic acknowledges SB 53 is a good step, but also highlights areas to refine. For example, today the criterion for deciding which models fall under the law uses the amount of compute used in training (FLOPS) with a threshold (10^26 FLOPS) that the company considers a reasonable starting point, but one that may need adjustment so powerful models don't slip through the cracks. (anthropic.com)
They also ask that public reports include more technical detail about the tests, evaluations, and mitigations performed, and that the regulation be updatable as technology advances. In other words, it's not enough to say "publish something"—the law should require publications that are useful and comparable. (anthropic.com, sb53.info)
What This Means for the Industry and for You
For the industry: if SB 53 passes along these lines, major developers would have a legal obligation to document how they handle critical risks. That can level competition around safety and transparency. Some labs already publish similar reports, but the law would make that standard mandatory. (sb53.info, anthropic.com)
For users, companies, and regulators: more public information about tests, limits, and failures of models makes it easier to make informed choices. Want to use a model in your startup or in a critical service? You'll have more public data to evaluate risks. And for the public, it means greater capacity for external oversight and auditing. (sd11.senate.ca.gov, anthropic.com)
SB 53 doesn't solve everything. But it makes mandatory something many companies already do on their own: document and be accountable. That's relevant if we don't want innovation to advance without basic checks.
Looking Ahead
Anthropic encourages California to pass SB 53 and urges federal regulators to work in parallel to create coherent national rules. The company offers to collaborate to refine technical thresholds and require more detailed reports that are genuinely useful for experts and auditors. (anthropic.com, sd11.senate.ca.gov)
So what happens next? The legislative process will continue in the relevant California committees, where the bill can receive amendments before a final vote. Meanwhile, the conversation between companies, regulators, and civil society will remain key to defining how much technical detail the law should require and how to update those requirements quickly. (sd11.senate.ca.gov, sb53.info)