Senate draft would impose 'duty of care' on frontier AI labs and allow blocking unsafe releases
Justgototheeffinmoon · reddit · 2026-09-12
Per Reuters, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, Commerce Chairman Ted Cruz, and Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Maria Cantwell are negotiating a draft bill that would:
- Create a legal 'duty of care' for developers of the most advanced AI models;
- Give the U.S. government power to block releases it deems unsafe;
- Route company challenges through federal courts.
- Targets include Google, Anthropic and OpenAI;
- Cruz frames the concern narrowly around 'catastrophic risks involving biological or nuclear threats'; Klobuchar is pushing bipartisan oversight with mandatory testing alongside government experts;
- Cantwell wants a stricter draft, opposing a weak federal standard that preempts stronger state protections, and wants national labs testing the most powerful models;
- Per Semafor, Anthropic hasn't taken a position but is giving feedback to sponsors.
Related event: Draft Bipartisan Senate AI Bill Sparks Backlash(4 posts)→
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