🏛️California Senator Who Won Congress Seat Pushes Hard AI Safety Bill

Your AI policy future may get a loud new voice

A California state senator who wrote legislation to curb advanced AI risks just won a congressional race. That puts him in position to shape federal AI policy, and he's already said he wants a seat on a select committee on artificial intelligence if Congress creates one. If you ship models, run AI infrastructure, or build on top of frontier labs, this matters. He's pushing for whistleblower protections, testing and auditing requirements, and a kill switch, and he wants Congress to use oversight powers on AI labs. He's also opposed to broad federal preemption of state AI laws, which would directly affect any team that has to comply with a patchwork of rules. His campaign took over $3 million from Public First Action, a nonprofit backing AI regulation, and opponents already call him too cozy with the industry. A report widely read as evidence that Anthropic reached recursive self-improvement fed his argument that time is running out. He's only cautiously optimistic, and he's worried about getting anything past President Trump.