Anthropic’s AI safety bill draws fire over its frontier compute line

Anthropic has handed US lawmakers a draft federal AI safety bill. The first fight is over a single number: 10²⁵ FLOPs. That figure decides which AI models count as “frontier” under the proposal. Critics argue it reflects an earlier era of AI, and that it now captures most enterprise-grade models. What the draft actually says The proposal builds on Anthropic’s Advanced AI Framework, which the company introduced in June 2026. The draft legislation itself dates to October 2026. Its central concept is the “covered developer.” To qualify, a company must train a model exceeding 10²⁵ FLOPs. It must also clear at least one financial bar. The first bar is more than $500 million in annual AI-derived revenue. The second is over $1 billion in annual AI research and development spending. Companies that meet the definition would face a set of transparency obligations. These include: Implementing formal safety frameworks Publishing system cards that document how models work and were tested Facilitating independent evaluations Reporting safety incidents The bill also sets limits on government power. The Commerce Department could restrict a model’s deployment, but only when catastrophic risks are f...