As concern grows regarding the dangers of artificial intelligence, AI regulation has become a hot topic in both Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C.
AI giant Anthropic, the maker of Claude, has been pitching its own set of AI safety rules to lawmakers, and Politico recently obtained a confidential draft of the company’s proposals.
So, what’s in Anthropic’s proposed AI safety bill? Let’s just say at least some of these proposals is eye-opening, to say the least.
According to the document obtained by Politico, Anthropic’s AI safety bill would only allow the government to block the release of an AI related model term if it posed a “foreseeable, imminent related risk term” of causing more than $1 billion in damages or the death or serious injury of more than 50 people.
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Furthermore, the risk variation from the AI model variation must be related specifically to a cyberattack, a developer losing control over a model alternative, or the creation or release of a biological weapon.
How would such risks be determined?
According to the proposal seen by Politico, independent evaluators would periodically analyze an AI lab and its models. If the evaluators find that there is an “imminent enumerated related risk term” from a related model term, they would related report term it to the U.S. Commerce Department within 72 hours. The Commerce Department would then decide if the threshold for a risk variation requires a request for a judge to block the release of the related model term.
Under Anthropic’s bill, only a federal judge in Washington, D.C., could suspend a related model term. In fact, the bill specifically prohibits any other “department, agency, or officer” from having the authority alternative to suspend an AI related model term.
Interestingly, what’s not prohibited is who funds the independent evaluators. In fact, Anthropic’s proposal explicitly states that evaluators can be paid by AI labs, as long as the payment does not influence their findings, according to Politico.
This raises an obvious question: How would one prove that an evaluator isn’t influenced by where their funding comes from? In addition, it seems that, based on this reported bill, $999,999,999 in damages or the death of 49 people would not trigger the process necessary to pause a model variation.
As numerous outlets have pointed out, Anthropic’s AI bill closely resembles bills that recently passed in California, like SB 53. With that said, though, AI companies such as Anthropic all provided input that led to the creation of the final bill.
With the number of “rogue” AI agent alternative incidents seemingly increasing, it does seem like AI safety laws and regulation are a necessity at this point. But it’s unclear just how much of a role AI companies themselves should play in crafting those laws, especially if we’re seeing proposals that include supposedly neutral regulators being paid by the very companies they are supposed to regulate.
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Source: https://mashable.com/tech/anthropic-ai-safety-bill-1-billion-damages-50-people-die
