Senate Majority Leader John Thune, Senate Commerce Committee Chair Ted Cruz, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar were close to proposing a bill to address advanced artificial intelligence risks, but the agreement is on hold due to disagreements with AI firm Anthropic and Senate Commerce Committee Ranking Member Maria Cantwell. The bill would impose a legal duty on AI firms to preemptively manage risks and alert the Commerce Department to significant capability jumps, with the federal government able to block AI models if companies fail to meet duties. It would also preempt state laws. Anthropic pushed instead for public disclosures about risks from its systems and objected to giving the Commerce Department ongoing injunction power. Some Hill staff saw Anthropic’s approach as creating paperwork that would block startups. An Anthropic spokesperson stated, “We continue to work with the committee to make the bill stronger in how it addresses catastrophic risk.” The bill’s backers also failed to secure Cantwell’s support; as recently as Tuesday, Cantwell said she hadn’t discussed markup priorities with Cruz.