Why California’s SB 53 might provide a meaningful check on big AI companies

The Staatssenate of California recently gave the final approval to a new AI safety account, SB 53, so that it was sent to Governor Gavin Newsom to whether Veto was sent.

If all this sounds familiar, it will be because Newsom last year another AI safety bill, also written by Senator Scott Wiener, wrote by Senator Scott Wiener. But SB 53 is narrower than the previous SB 1047 from Wiener, with a focus on large AI companies that earn more than $ 500 million in annual income.

I had the opportunity to discuss SB 53 with my colleagues Max Zeff and Kirsten Korosec about the latest episode of WAN’s flagship podcast Equity. Max believes that Wiener’s new account has a better chance of becoming a law, partly because of that large company focus, and because it is endorsed by AI Company Anthropic.

Read below an example of our conversation about AI safety and legislation at state level. (I have edited the transcript for length and clarity and to make us sound somewhat smarter.)

Max: Why would you give AI security legislation that passes a room in California? We enter this era where AI companies become the most powerful companies in the world, and this will potentially become one of the few controls at their power.

This is much narrower than SB 1047, which received a lot of pushback last year. But I think SB 53 still places some meaningful regulations on the AI ​​Laboratories. It lets them publish safety reports for their models. If they have an incident, it in fact forces them to report that to the government. And it also gives them a channel for employees in these laboratories, if they are worried, to report it to the government and not to be confronted with the pushback of the companies, although many of them have signed NDAs.

For me this feels like a potentially meaningful control of the power of technology companies, something that we have not really had in recent decades.

Kirsten: To your point why it matters at the state level, it is important to think about the fact that it is California. Every large AI company is almost, if not based here, it has a large footprint in this state. Not that other states do not matter – I don’t want to get e -mails from the people in Colorado or whatever – but it does matter that it is specifically California because it is really a hub of AI activity.

My question for you, however, Max, it seems that there are many exceptions and carve-outs. It’s narrower, but it is more complicated than the previous one [bill]?

Max: In some respects, yes. I would say that the most important carve-out of this account is that it really does not try to apply for small startups. And in fact, one of the most important controversies around the last legislative effort by Senator Scott Weiner, who represents San Francisco, who wrote this bill, many people said it could harm the startup ecosystem, with which many people have problems because that is such a thriving part of the Californian economy.

This account specifically applies to AI developers who are [generating] More than $ 500 million [from] Their AI models. This really tries to focus on OpenAI, Google DeepMind, these large companies and not your advanced startup.

Anthony: As I understand, you have to share some safety information if you are a smaller startup, but not nearly as much.

Are [also] Worth talking about the wider landscape around AI regulation and the fact that one of the major changes between last year and this year is now a new president. The federal administration has not included a position of no regulation and companies must be able to do what they want, to the extent that they have actually included [language] When financing accounts that say that states cannot have their own AI regulation.

I don’t think something has passed so far, but they might try to get that through in the future. So this can be another front in which the Trump government and Blue States fight.

Equity is the flagship podcast from WAN, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and report every Wednesday and Friday.

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