Anthropic Floats AI Safety Bill With $1B, 50-Death Thresholds

Anthropic representatives have quietly pitched Capitol Hill lawmakers a draft bill that would let Washington block a frontier AI model only in narrow, catastrophic cases, Politico reported, citing three people with knowledge of the efforts.

The trigger, as reported, is a "foreseeable, imminent risk of more than $1 billion in damages, or of killing or seriously injuring more than 50 people." The qualifying harm must stem from one of three sources: the creation or release of a biological weapon, the model evading its developer's controls, or a cyberattack.

Enforcement runs through a single channel. Independent evaluators would register with the U.S. Department of Commerce and conduct periodic assessments. AI companies could pay these evaluators, provided the payment "is not tied to the evaluation's outcome." If an evaluator identifies a qualifying risk, they must notify Commerce within 72 hours of completing their assessment. Commerce could then ask a federal judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to suspend the model's release or use.

The draft also closes off every other path. The statute "explicitly prohibits any other US government department, agency, or officer from suspending development, deployment, or internal use." An Anthropic spokesperson said the proposals reflect ideas in the company's Advanced AI Framework, released earlier this year.

The pitch lands inside a crowded regulation feed and near-daily Anthropic coverage in our tracker this quarter.