Privacy & Information Security Law Blog

The New York legislature recently passed the Responsible AI Safety and Education Act (SB6953B) (“RAISE Act”).  The bill awaits signature by New York Governor Kathy Hochul.

Applicability and Relevant Definitions

The RAISE Act applies to “large developers,” which is defined as a person that has trained at least one frontier model and has spent over $100 million in compute costs in aggregate in training frontier models. 

• “Frontier model” means either (1) an artificial intelligence (AI) model trained using greater than 10°26 computational operations (e.g., integer or floating-point operations), the compute cost of which exceeds $100 million; or (2) an AI model produced by applying knowledge distillation to a frontier model, provided that the compute cost for such model produced by applying knowledge distillation exceeds $5 million.
• “Knowledge distillation” is defined as any supervised learning technique that uses a larger AI model or the output of a larger AI model to train a smaller AI model with similar or equivalent capabilities as the larger AI model.

The RAISE Act imposes the following obligations and restrictions on large developers:  

• Prohibition on Frontier Models that Create Unreasonable Risk of Critical Harm: The RAISE Act prohibits large developers from deploying a frontier model if doing so would create an unreasonable risk of “critical harm.”
  • “Critical harm” is defined as the death or serious injury of 100 or more people, or at least $1 billion in damage to rights in money or property, caused or materially enabled by a large developer’s use, storage, or release of a frontier model through (1) the creation or use of a chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapon; or (2) an AI model engaging in conduct that (i) acts with no meaningful human intervention and (ii) would, if committed by a human, constitute a crime under the New York Penal Code that requires intent, recklessness, or gross negligence, or the solicitation or aiding and abetting of such a crime.
• Pre-Deployment Documentation and Disclosures: Before deploying a frontier model, large developers must:
  • (1) implement a written safety and security protocol;
  • (2) retain an unredacted copy of the safety and security protocol, including records and dates of any updates or revisions, for as long as the frontier model is deployed plus five years;
  • (3) conspicuously publish a redacted copy of the safety and security protocol and provide a copy of such redacted protocol to the New York Attorney General (“AG”) and the Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services (“DHS”) (as well as grant the AG access to the unredacted protocol upon request);
  • (4) record and retain for as long as the frontier model is deployed plus five years information on the specific tests and test results used in any assessment of the frontier model that provides sufficient detail for third parties to replicate the testing procedure; and
  • (5) implement appropriate safeguards to prevent unreasonable risk of critical harm posed by the frontier model.
• Safety and Security Protocol Annual Review: A large developer must conduct an annual review of its safety and security protocol to account for any changes to the capabilities of its frontier models and industry best practices and make any necessary modifications to protocol. For material modifications, the large developer must conspicuously publish a copy of such protocol with appropriate redactions (as described above).  
• Reporting Safety Incidents: A large developer must disclose each safety incident affecting a frontier model to the AG and DHS within 72 hours of the large developer learning of the safety incident or facts sufficient to establish a reasonable belief that a safety incident occurred.
  • “Safety incident” is defined as a known incidence of critical harm or one of the following incidents that provides demonstrable evidence of an increased risk of critical harm: (1) a frontier model autonomously engaging in behavior other than at the request of a user; (2) theft, misappropriation, malicious use, inadvertent release, unauthorized access, or escape of the model weights of a frontier model; (3) the critical failure of any technical or administrative controls, including controls limiting the ability to modify a frontier model; or (4) unauthorized use of a frontier model. The disclosure must include (1) the date of the safety incident; (2) the reasons the incident qualifies as a safety incident; and (3) a short and plain statement describing the safety incident.

If enacted, the RAISE Act would take effect 90 days after being signed into law.