OpenAI and California AI safety bills

OpenAI endorsed four California bills including SB 813, which Newsom signed September 11 creating an independent AI verification framework, with Chief Global Affairs Officer Chris Lehane citing "the recent jump in capabilities" as the reason for reversing past opposition.

A structural debate also entered the story: David Sacks and others argue that safety regulations requiring continuous monitoring could effectively exclude open-weight models from the market without a formal ban. Anthropic denied supporting a blanket open-weight ban, described open models without dangerous capabilities as a public good, and argued regulation should be capability-based rather than openness-based.

Newsom signed SB 813 and three additional bills into law on September 11, enacting an independent AI verification framework and new rules on children's chatbots, social media targeting, and platform liability.

The same day, a bipartisan Senate bill from Cruz, Thune, and Klobuchar was reported that would broadly preempt state AI laws while allowing only voluntary self-certification, a direct conflict with the framework California just established. Rep. Ro Khanna also issued a mea culpa saying he and much of the California delegation were wrong to oppose SB 1047, Scott Wiener's 2024 state AI liability bill, having dismissed safety activists' warnings as science fiction.

OpenAI endorsed four California AI safety bills on September 10, including some it had previously opposed, and Chief Global Affairs Officer Chris Lehane called for mandatory, capability-based national AI safety regulation in a published statement.

Lehane cited "a recent jump in capabilities" as the reason for the shift and said the company would prioritize safety over capability growth if the two conflict. Williams and Oks, formerly the Gravel Teens, also joined OpenAI's Strategic Futures team under Dean Ball, a former Trump AI policy adviser who publicly posted about the endorsements, a hire noted to carry political risk with the Trump administration.

Williams and Oks joined OpenAI's Strategic Futures team under Dean Ball to work on preparing for transformative AI