Osse asks companies about RAISE Act lobbying and federal preemption

Additionally, all of you have said on the stand today under oath that your companies will support and work with the council on any AI regulation and safety measures and have supported measures like the RAISE Act.

I know that a couple companies said that they supported the RAISE Act, but let's be real here.

It is well known that OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta lobbied against the RAISE Act for a year, but all of a sudden, once the governor signed it into law a month later, your company started saying you support this legislation.

As many people know here, the RAISE Act is the floor of AI safety, not the ceiling.

And with that said, do you support or oppose the federal government blocking states?

And local governments from regulating AI.

Because that is the position of the federal government.

So I will start.

Thank you for the question.

So we have been clear that we think the federal government should lead in frontier safety regulation.

But in the absence of federal regulation, we believe it's important for states to advance harmonized approaches to frontier safety.

I'm happy to share that OpenAI has supported legislation that is stronger than the RAISE Act.

In Illinois this year, we supported a frontier safety bill that would require third-party audits of our safety framework, and we're committed to working with policymakers to continue raising the floor on frontier safety.

I'm just going to push back there because, you know, I support the RAISE Act.

I think it was an incredible start on AI regulation here in New York State.

And while you're saying that OpenAI has supported, you know, your words, stronger AI regulation, OpenAI leadership has also lobbied against congressional candidates who promised to work on AI legislation.

So how can we trust your companies, not just OpenAI, but all four of your companies, not to fight against AI regulations when your political activities and contributions do not say the same?

So I will start again.

Thanks.

Look, I can't speak for the personal actions of OpenAI leaders that they have taken in their personal capacity.

What I can tell you is that we have endorsed strong regulations, both on frontier safety in Illinois, as well as on youth safety in California.

And we are committed to working with policymakers to strengthen regulation and to ensure that all AI is developed responsibly.

Mr.

Cahill.

Thank you, Council Member.

In relation to your question, how I think about it broadly is that it is critical that the U.S.

And democratic countries lead in relation to AI innovation.

In this regard, AI is trans...

transcontinental, I guess, I was going to use transnational, but transcontinental in the case of the US.

And therefore, it's really important and critical that regulations and obligations are consistent across the board, if it is to be true that the US and democratic countries can continue to lead in this,

in AI innovation.

We support a uniform, robust federal standard in that regard.

So Google also supports a federal framework for AI.

We think that federal framework should first and foremost concentrate on frontier or the most advanced AI capabilities,

primarily because they often touch on national security, and that's a traditional jurisdiction of the federal government to ensure that national security standard is the same across all 50 states and our territories.

But we also believe that there's lots of jurisdiction that is traditionally at the state level where it is perfectly appropriate for states to regulate on AI.

And again, we think a lot of existing frameworks, both at the state and federal level, already apply to AI technologies.

But we're working very closely with states and with the federal government to examine places where we might need net new regulation for new technologies introduced by AI.

First, I want to say that we've long supported the role for government to play here, both at the federal and the state level.

I want to clarify that we were the only company on this panel to support SB 53 in California before it became signed into law, which my understanding is was the basis of the RAISE Act.

We support the RAISE Act, and in fact, we support a stronger legislation, including in Massachusetts, requiring independent evaluation as well.

And we've also proposed a federal framework that goes further.

We think raise is the floor, that we need to raise it.

We detail this in what we call our advanced AI framework as well.

Thank you.

Councilmember Hudson.