Incident reports

What it does

When something goes badly wrong, such as stolen model weights or a model helping to cause serious harm, the lab reports it to the state within 15 days. If lives are at immediate risk, it has 24 hours.

Applies to: Frontier developers (models above 10^26 FLOP).

• Report a critical safety incident to the state within 15 days of discovering it (California SB 53).
• Report within 24 hours if the incident poses an imminent risk of death or serious injury.
• EU Code of Practice signatories report serious incidents on a 2, 5, 10 or 15 day clock depending on severity.
• SB 1047 would have required 72 hours.

Where things stand

OpenAI and Anthropic already have incident processes under their own frameworks, and both are now legally bound by SB 53 in California. Nothing in the requirement touches training, internal use or release.

Why it costs almost no lead

A report is filed after an incident, so it never holds up a model. The staff time displaces almost no research, so the effect on the lead is under a day.

Biggest unknown: None worth naming. The only cost is a lawyer's afternoon.

Why it lowers p(doom) by ~0.05%

Lets the government spot dangerous failures early, like a stolen model or AI helping with an attack.

Reports come after something has gone wrong, so they mostly help regulators respond and learn. They rarely prevent the first disaster.

The strongest case that it costs more

A reporting regime creates a record that regulators and plaintiffs can use later, which could make labs more cautious about internal deployments of capable models. That caution, not the filing, is where a cost would come from. We see no evidence of it so far and it would be a cost of liability exposure rather than of the reporting rule itself.

The debate

For

• California SB 53 requires frontier developers to report critical safety incidents within 15 days, 2025.
• New York RAISE Act requires incident reports within 72 hours, 2025.
• EU AI Act requires providers of the biggest models to report serious incidents without undue delay.
• Anthropic endorsed SB 53, including its incident reporting, 2025.

Against

• Chamber of Progress called SB 53 a compliance trap that penalizes paperwork failures, 2025.
• Trump administration ordered a Justice Department task force to challenge state AI laws, December 2025.

Sources

• California Bus. & Prof. Code § 22757.13 (SB 53): critical safety incident reporting: 15 days; 24 hours if imminent
• SB 1047 enrolled text, § 22603(g): 72-hour reporting
• EU GPAI Code of Practice, Safety and Security chapter: serious-incident deadlines of 2, 5, 10 and 15 days