California Proposes Whistleblower Protections, Public Computing for AI Safety

California's new AI bill, SB 53, proposes whistleblower protections for employees raising concerns about critically risky AI systems and establishes a public computing cluster, CalCompute, amid ongoing debates around AI safety and existential risk.

• The author of California's SB 1047 AI safety bill introduced a new AI bill, SB 53, which provides whistleblower protections for employees at leading AI labs and establishes a public cloud computing cluster called CalCompute.
• SB 53 protects whistleblowers who believe their employers are creating AI systems that pose a 'critical risk', defined as a risk of causing death, serious injury, or over $1 billion in damages.
• While SB 53 aims to address AI safety concerns, it remains unclear how legislative efforts around existential AI risk will fare in 2025, as the AI doom movement has seemingly lost ground.