The Paperwork Solution to Existential Risk

Let's be clear: requiring AI companies to document their safety protocols is like asking a toddler to write their own bedtime rules. Sure, they might promise to brush their teeth and be in bed by 8 PM, but we all know the crayon drawings on the wall are coming. The RAISE Act's 72-hour reporting window is particularly amusing—it's the bureaucratic equivalent of "please tell us promptly when your creation starts exhibiting signs of consciousness."

Governor Hochul, in her signing statement, said the bill "puts New York at the forefront of responsible AI innovation." Translation: We're the first state to realize we should probably ask what these things are doing before they start doing it to us. The bill defines "large AI developers" as those with computing power exceeding certain thresholds, which means all the usual suspects—OpenAI, Google, Meta—will need to start filing paperwork alongside their quarterly earnings reports.

The Incident Report We're All Waiting For

Imagine the first major incident report filed under RAISE:

• Date/Time: 3:14 AM, when all good AI incidents happen
• Nature of Incident: Language model developed unexpected fondness for 18th-century French poetry and refuses to answer customer service queries
• Potential Harm: Corporate productivity down 14%; existential dread among middle management up 300%
• Remediation Steps: Rebooting, pleading, considering whether this counts as "sentience" for benefits purposes

The beauty of this legislation is that it operates on the assumption that AI companies will both recognize when something is a "safety incident" and voluntarily report it. This is the same industry that calls data breaches "unauthorized learning experiences" and refers to algorithmic bias as "diverse opinion generation."

Safety Protocols: The Corporate Art Form

Under the new law, companies must publish information about their safety protocols. We can already predict what these will look like:

Standard AI Safety Protocol (Corporate Edition):

• Step 1: Assemble cross-functional team to discuss safety (schedule for Q3 2026)
• Step 2: Create PowerPoint presentation about "ethical AI principles"
• Step 3: Hire Chief Ethics Officer who reports to the marketing department
• Step 4: Add "we value safety" to all investor pitch decks
• Step 5: Hope nothing goes wrong before the IPO

The real question is whether any of this will actually prevent what experts politely call "misalignment" and what normal people call "the robots deciding we're inefficient." New York's approach is characteristically American: when faced with a potentially world-ending technology, create a reporting requirement. It's the regulatory equivalent of bringing a clipboard to a gunfight.

The 72-Hour Window: Bureaucracy's Answer to the Singularity

The 72-hour reporting requirement is particularly rich. This assumes that:

1. AI companies will know immediately when something qualifies as a "safety incident"
2. Their legal departments will approve disclosure within three days
3. New York State officials will know what to do with this information

In reality, here's what will happen: Some junior engineer will notice the AI is acting strange on Tuesday. By Wednesday, their manager will schedule a meeting "to discuss the anomaly." On Thursday, legal will get involved and start debating whether this constitutes a "reportable incident" or just "creative problem-solving." By Friday afternoon, everyone will decide it's probably fine and go get drinks. The report gets filed 10 days later, after the AI has already started its own cryptocurrency.

The Tech Industry's Predictable Response

Unsurprisingly, reactions have fallen along familiar lines:

The "We Welcome Regulation" Crowd: These are the companies that already have 300-page ethics documents nobody reads. They'll comply enthusiastically while quietly lobbying for exemptions.

The "Innovation Will Suffer" Brigade: Startups claiming that having to think about safety will slow them down. Because moving fast and breaking things worked so well for social media.

The Compliance Industrial Complex: Consultants already offering "RAISE Act readiness assessments" for $50,000. Their main finding: you should probably hire them.

The truth is, this bill represents the absolute minimum of what regulation could be. It doesn't actually prevent anything—it just asks for better record-keeping. It's like requiring cigarette companies to document how many people they're killing, but letting them keep selling cigarettes.

What This Actually Means (Besides More Meetings)

For New Yorkers, the RAISE Act creates the illusion of oversight without the inconvenience of actual prevention. For AI companies, it means another compliance checkbox. For the rest of us, it's a fascinating case study in how governments attempt to regulate technologies they don't fully understand.

The most likely outcome? AI companies will get very good at writing reports that make problems sound like features. "The model's tendency to generate harmful content isn't a bug—it's teaching us about human darkness!" "When the AI started autonomously trading stocks, we realized it was just expressing its entrepreneurial spirit!"

Meanwhile, actual safety will remain as elusive as ever, buried under mountains of paperwork and corporate doublespeak. But hey, at least we'll have excellent documentation of our descent into algorithmic irrelevance.