![\"CEO](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/dario-amodei-anthropic.jpg\")
<\/p>\n\t<\/p>\n
CEO of Anthropic Dario Amodei looks on as U.S. President Donald Trump holds a press briefing with AI executives on September 29, 2026.Kevin Dietsch\/Getty<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\tGet your news from a source that\u2019s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily.<\/a><\/p>\n As the debate over regulating AI companies rages on, the artificial intelligence giant Anthropic has scaled up its Capitol Hill lobbying. And, as lawmakers propose ways to curb largely unregulated AI development, the company has started pitching its own draft bill to regulate the industry, Politico reported Friday.<\/a><\/p>\n The draft legislation would allow the government to block the release of any AI models it believes pose a danger to the public. But the its threshold for danger seems very high. \u201cThe bill would let the government block a model\u2019s release or use only if it poses a foreseeable, imminent risk of more than $1 billion in damages, or of killing or seriously injuring more than 50 people,\u201d Politico\u2018s Owen Dahlkamp reported. That is, if a model seemed like it might kill or seriously injure only a few people, or cause less than a billion dollars worth in property damage, the government would not be able to regulate it.<\/p>\n The bill further limits what counts as an intervention-worthy \u201crisk\u201d to three categories: the creation of a biological weapon, the model evading its developer\u2019s controls, or a cyberattack. That means that other forms of AI-related harm\u2014like AI-powered fraud<\/a>\u2014would not be included. Anthropic\u2019s proposal also reportedly prohibits any US agency other than the Commerce Department from intervening to suspend an AI model\u2019s development or internal use.<\/p>\n \u201cThis bill represents the proposals outlined in Anthropic\u2019s Advanced AI Framework<\/a>, which we have been advocating for with federal and state lawmakers since June,\u201d an Anthropic spokesperson told Politico. \u201cThese are sensible policies we believe Congress should act on.\u201d<\/p>\n Lawmakers of both parties have increasingly called to regulate the AI industry\u2014proposing to tax AI companies heavily, pause frontier model development, create a cabinet-level AI-oversight department, and more. Anthropic has ramped up its lobbying commensurately, spending more money lobbying Congress in the first half of 2026 than it did in all of 2025. The company has also lobbied heavily on the state level, particularly in California, where it has spent at least $90,000<\/a> to push pro-data-center-development policies in the past year. (Anthropic has also deployed lobbyists in states including Tennessee<\/a> and North Carolina<\/a>, and it has reportedly sent a delegation to Vatican City<\/a> in order to convince the Pope to consider AI conscious.)<\/p>\n The company\u2019s congressional draft bill represents an effort by the company to concentrate regulatory power in a single agency\u2014and if it passes, it could preempt states from passing stronger regulatory laws. <\/p>\n That leaves AI regulation in the hands of a comparatively friendly federal government, led by a president who has suggested repeatedly that \u201cartificial intelligence\u201d be renamed \u201csuper intelligence.\u201d He\u2019s also pushed for industry self-regulation, which historically has not been very effective: see the 2007-08 financial collapse.<\/p>\n