Illinois Legislature passes historic AI bill that would require third-party safety audits - NBC News

Oh, marvellous. Illinois has passed SB 315, requiring frontier AI companies to publish risk plans and submit to annual independent third-party safety audits — a provision 'not in other state AI laws,' apparently because those laws were written by people who've never seen a corporate risk register. The bill is being hailed as 'historic,' which in US state-level AI regulation means 'we made a PDF that says something.' The key question, as ever, is who counts as 'independent' when the auditors are paid by the auditees and the 'risk plan' can be as vague as 'we'll try not to kill anyone.' It's a step, sure — a step onto a treadmill that goes nowhere if enforcement remains as toothless as a pensioner's gums.

Now, the optimists will point to the annual audit cycle as a meaningful check. But we've seen this rodeo before: financial audits after Enron, privacy audits after Cambridge Analytica, safety audits after every Boeing crash. The pattern is beautiful: scandal → law → audit requirement → capture of auditing firms → nothing changes. The Illinois law doesn't specify what happens if an audit finds a model can't be controlled. Does the company get a sternly worded letter? A fine that's a rounding error on training costs? Or does the bill actually empower the state to pull the plug on a dangerous deployment? The excerpt is characteristically silent on that bit.

And let's not forget the lobbying. Illinois is home to plenty of tech money, and the phrase 'third-party auditor' is catnip for consultants who'll happily write glowing safety reports for a fee. The labs will hire the same firms that couldn't spot Theranos's fraud until Holmes was in handcuffs. So yes, 'historic' — in the same sense that a horse-and-cart is historic. Enjoy the ride while it lasts, because the next version of GPT will be here before the first audit cycle is complete.