Grant whistleblower protections to AI safety researchers

Key insights

Many statements link whistleblower protections to other oversight tools such as independent audits, incident reporting, safety frameworks, and external evaluations.
A common rationale is prevention: several quotes stress reporting based on good-faith concern, reasonable belief, or foreseeable risk before harm is fully proven.
Disagreement within supportive quotes often concerns scope and implementation—who counts as a protected reporter, what risks qualify, and how confidential channels should work—rather than whether retaliation is acceptable.
The quoted dissent does not reject whistleblower protection in general; it questions whether a separate AI-specific regime is necessary where broader employment protections already exist.

Arguments for

Insider warning system

Proponents say people working inside frontier AI companies are often the first to see dangerous capabilities, safety failures, or security vulnerabilities. Because outside regulators and the public cannot easily observe those problems, protections are presented as a way to turn insiders into an early warning system for public safety and national security.

The people who first see a dangerous training run are usually inside the lab, under NDAs, watching a launch calendar. Whistleblower protection is how those people become a warning system instead of a silence system. [...] Frontier AI researchers have a vantage point no regulator …

Thomas Holland · Mar 8, 2026 · full quote
The people closest to an emerging technology should not have to choose between protecting the public and protecting their careers.

Jeana Lee · Sep 5, 2026 · full quote
AI whistleblowers are essential to safer, more ethical AI because they surface hidden risks and serve as regulators of last resort. This requires that we build a whistleblowing system that not only relies on the moral courage of whistleblowers but also provides a safer channel of…

Apoorv Agarwal · Feb 10, 2026 · full quote
Ensuring transparency and accountability in the rapidly evolving field of AI is a public interest and national security imperative. Employees in the industry have firsthand knowledge of practices that may jeopardize public safety and our national security. The AI Whistleblower Pr…

Brad Carson · May 15, 2026 · full quote
In a time when AI technologies are advancing faster than many institutions can keep up, it's absolutely vital that the federal government has access to accurate, truthful information about the dangers AI poses to public health and public safety.

Jason Green-Lowe · May 15, 2026 · full quote

Chilling effect on safety

Supporters argue that retaliation, bullying, or unexplained firings can chill internal debate and discourage cooperation with outside safety groups, auditors, or evaluators. They say AI cannot be built safely if the people closest to the risks believe raising concerns could harm their jobs or careers.

The message to everyone still at OpenAI is clear: raise concerns or work closely with outside safety groups, and you could be next, without being told why. You can’t build AGI safely if the people closest to the risks are afraid to speak.

Jasmine Wang · Oct 8, 2026 · full quote
OpenAI has three less good safety researchers. Trust will be lower. Speech will be chilled. [...] The only way to affirm an open and transparent culture of dialogue, and okay with full collaboration with outsiders and auditors and evaluators on safety issues, is to send costly or…

Zvi Mowshowitz · Oct 12, 2026 · full quote
I believe we were fired for prioritising safety over the near-term interests of OpenAI as a corporation.

Mikita Balesni · Oct 10, 2026 · full quote
Embedded evaluators are independent external experts placed within frontier AI companies to provide ongoing assessments and validation of a company’s safety, security, and operational systems, practices, and claims. [...] Contracts should contain specific provisions that protect …

Theo Bearman · Oct 13, 2026 · full quote
In order for @OpenAI and other AI companies to be held accountable to their own commitments on safety, security, governance and ethics, the public must have confidence that employees will not be retaliated against for speaking out.

Jacob Hilton · Jun 4, 2024 · full quote

Part of broader oversight

Many quotes treat whistleblower protections as one element of a wider governance package alongside clear safety standards, continuous testing, incident reporting, audits, security standards, and compliance processes. In this view, protected reporting channels help validate company claims and get serious failures to authorities.

To manage risks from advanced AI systems we need clear safety standards, continuous testing, and reporting of serious failures. [...] Employees and contractors who report safety, security or compliance concerns should be protected from retaliation.

Maria Cantwell · Oct 7, 2026 · full quote
Companies developing the most capable systems should meet clear requirements, including independent audits, incident reporting, strong security standards, and whistleblower protections.

Chris Lehane · Jul 15, 2026 · full quote
The Artificial Intelligence Safety Measures Act establishes a framework requiring developers of the largest advanced AI systems to publicly disclose safety practices, report significant safety incidents, and maintain robust compliance processes. The law also creates confidential …

Office of Governor JB Pritzker · Jul 6, 2026 · full quote
Require the largest AI companies to publish and comply with safety frameworks, submit to third-party audits, and ensure whistleblowers are protected.

Lori Trahan · Jun 1, 2026 · full quote
Companies developing advanced AI models must ensure model capability does not outpace controllability. They should take proactive steps to ensure safety and accountability by voluntarily disclosing serious incidents, protecting whistleblowers, and subjecting their systems to rigo…

Spencer Cox · Sep 14, 2026 · full quote

Closing legal gaps

Supporters contend existing whistleblower law often centers on outright illegal activity and may not clearly cover AI-specific safety concerns, security vulnerabilities, or disclosures constrained by NDAs or trade-secret rules. They therefore argue for AI-specific legislation or safe harbors so employees and researchers can report in good faith without reprisal or lengthy legal battles.

If AI companies want to claim that they are building the most world-changing technology to ever exist, their employees should be able to share concerns about risks to public safety along the way without fearing the repercussions. AI whistleblowing is largely unprotected by existi…

Helen Toner · Apr 22, 2026 · full quote
Congress could pass legislation to prohibit employment discrimination against whistleblowers reporting AI security vulnerabilities. Some security researchers at frontier AI companies complain that they are discouraged from informing policymakers about major security vulnerabiliti…

Yusuf Mahmood · Apr 16, 2026 · full quote
The confidentiality agreements often contain gagging language that violates an SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission] law that says you can’t interfere with a whistleblower’s ability to report to external regulators.

Mary Inman · Feb 26, 2026 · full quote
The California Legislature should amend Civil Code § 3426.1 to create a safe harbor excluding from “misappropriation” disclosures of reasonably necessary information to designated state bodies for reporting significant AI-related public harm.

Michael Endrias · Mar 4, 2026 · full quote
Last month, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) led a bipartisan team of policymakers to introduce the AI Whistleblower Protection Act. The bill would prohibit retaliation against workers in the AI industry who raise the alarm about failures in AI safety or security. The AI Whistleb…

Nate Karren · Jun 11, 2025 · full quote

Arguments against

Existing-law duplication

The main opposing view says existing whistleblower laws already protect employees from retaliation. From that perspective, creating a separate AI-specific regime could cause confusion, duplication, and unintended consequences for employers in technical and competitive fields.

Connecticut already has strong whistleblower laws that protect employees from retaliation. [...] creating a separate, AI-specific whistleblower regime could lead to confusion, duplication, and unintended consequences for employers operating in highly technical and competitive fie…

Christopher Davis · 2026 · full quote

Middle ground

Scope and thresholds

Some supportive voices focus on drafting details rather than the basic principle, warning that narrow definitions of protected workers or overly demanding harm thresholds could exclude the people best placed to spot failures. They favor coverage tied to reasonable belief, foreseeable risk, or substantial and specific danger, instead of requiring proof of catastrophic harm.

The AI Whistleblower Protection Act ... is the first piece of US federal legislation written specifically to protect the people inside AI companies who raise safety concerns. [...] We support the bill, and we want to see it enacted—ideally in a strengthened form that closes gaps …

Indah Harahap · Jul 30, 2026 · full quote
“We wanted those to be fairly broad and fairly standard,” she said. “Instead, it was winnowed down to only certain people that work in certain parts of an AI company — and only about certain kinds of threats that related specifically to catastrophic property damage or catastrophi…

Tracy Rosenberg · Dec 29, 2025 · full quote
finds it concerning that the scope of who can be a protected whistleblower was narrowed, thereby threatening transparency and accountability in a booming industry with already little regulatory framework. [...] believes the broadest possible scope of who can be considered a whist…

Margaux Ewen · Dec 29, 2025 · full quote
The bill is protecting whistleblowers if there's a foreseeable risk. [...] The protections may still be in place even if the actual damage did not result in that number because it's foreseeable risk.

Gary Turco · May 1, 2026 · full quote
It doesn’t seem at all unreasonable to suggest that AI whistleblower legislation... should similarly protect disclosures when the whistleblower believes in good faith... a “substantial and specific” potential danger.

Institute for Law & AI · full quote

Reporting channel design

Several contributors argue that formal anti-retaliation rights need to be backed by usable reporting systems, such as anonymous or confidential channels, protection of whistleblowers' identities, clear paths to boards or regulators, and legal or psychosocial support. Their emphasis is on making reporting safe in practice, not only on paper.

Establish whistleblower protections drawn from the NSM on AI, ensuring personnel can report AI misuse, civil liberties concerns, and safety violations without fear of reprisal, with anonymous and confidential reporting procedures.

Adam Schiff · Jun 8, 2026 · full quote
That the company will facilitate a verifiably anonymous process for current and former employees to raise risk-related concerns to the company’s board, to regulators, and to an appropriate independent organization with relevant expertise; Companies have a legitimate interest to …

William Saunders · 2024 · full quote
Alongside with the secure tool, the AI Office commits itself to a high standard of confidentiality and has documented internal procedures to maximise the protection whistleblowers' identities.

European Commission · 2026 · full quote
Whistleblowers need psychosocial support, they need various types of legal support; we’re here to make sure that they’re not silenced by the documents that they’re asked to sign on their way in and out.

Mary Inman · Feb 26, 2026 · full quote
Our findings suggest that whistleblower programmes will be more effective if they financially reward whistleblowers, provide protections for whistleblowers, enable whistleblowers to report anonymously, are adequately staffed and funded, and provide advice to potential whistleblow…

Ethan Beri · Mar 2026 · full quote

Across the supplied statements, many contributors portray whistleblower protections as a necessary way to surface safety and security concerns inside frontier AI companies. The remaining disagreement is narrower: whether AI needs its own dedicated legal regime and how broad, confidential, and practically enforceable those protections should be.

Source diversity

Supportive quotes come from elected officials, researchers, legal advocates, unions, and some AI companies, indicating a coalition that spans policy, labor, technical, and industry roles.

Cast Your Vote:

Results (106 votes):

Total (106 votes)

For 105 (99%) Abstain 0 (0%) Against 1 (1%)

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For (104)

Theo Bearman
Frontier-security researcher at the Institute for AI Policy and Strategy and former UK government AI policy lead.

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votes For and says:

Embedded evaluators are independent external experts placed within frontier AI companies to provide ongoing assessments and validation of a company’s safety, security, and operational systems, practices, and claims. [...] Contracts should contain spe...
more AI Verified source (Oct 13, 2026)

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Zvi Mowshowitz
Writer and commentator on artificial intelligence, technology, and public policy.

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votes For and says:

OpenAI has three less good safety researchers. Trust will be lower. Speech will be chilled. [...] The only way to affirm an open and transparent culture of dialogue, and okay with full collaboration with outsiders and auditors and evaluators on safet...
more AI Verified source (Oct 12, 2026)

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Mikita Balesni
AI safety researcher and founding member at Apollo Research, focused on safety cases and evaluations of frontier AI models.

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votes For and says:

I believe we were fired for prioritising safety over the near-term interests of OpenAI as a corporation.
AI Verified source (Oct 10, 2026)

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Jasmine Wang
OpenAI employee and AI researcher.

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votes For and says:

The message to everyone still at OpenAI is clear: raise concerns or work closely with outside safety groups, and you could be next, without being told why. You can’t build AGI safely if the people closest to the risks are afraid to speak.
AI Verified source (Oct 8, 2026)

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Ro Khanna
U.S. Representative for California's 17th congressional district

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votes For and says:

This is why Congress needs to pass a whistleblower protection act that protects AI employees like Jasmine from retaliation and bullying.
AI Verified source (Oct 8, 2026)

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Maria Cantwell
U.S. Senator from Washington

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votes For and says:

To manage risks from advanced AI systems we need clear safety standards, continuous testing, and reporting of serious failures. [...] Employees and contractors who report safety, security or compliance concerns should be protected from retaliation.
AI Verified source (Oct 7, 2026)

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Americans for Responsible Innovation
AI policy advocacy nonprofit

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votes For and says:

Americans for Responsible Innovation (ARI) urged the Senate to pass the legislation, which would extend existing whistleblower protections to shield employees of AI labs from retaliation if they disclose significant risks about their work to the Amer...
more AI Verified source (Sep 23, 2026)

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Patricia Fahy
New York State Senator for the 46th District and sponsor of the 2026 TERMINATOR Act on frontier-AI safety oversight.

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votes For and says:

No large frontier developer, or contractor or subcontractor thereof, shall discharge, demote, suspend, threaten, harass, discriminate, or otherwise retaliate against an employee or contractor because such employee or contractor, based upon a reasonab...
more AI Verified source (Sep 18, 2026)

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Cory Booker
U.S. Senator for New Jersey.

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votes For and says:

Serious people, including researchers and leaders inside the companies developing the most advanced AI, are warning about dangerous biological or cyber capabilities—and the emergence of systems that behave in ways humans cannot reliably predict or co...
more AI Verified source (Sep 17, 2026)

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Chris Coons
U.S. Senator from Delaware

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votes For and says:

These models are doing things that their designers didn’t expect, can’t predict, and aren’t able to fully control. And the level of risk for us as a species, as a nation, is gradually accelerating. I have a bill in the Judiciary Committee with Senat...
more AI Verified source (Sep 14, 2026)

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Jeana Lee
Program Manager at the National Whistleblower Center.

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votes For and says:

The people closest to an emerging technology should not have to choose between protecting the public and protecting their careers.
AI Verified source (Sep 5, 2026)

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Miles Brundage
AI policy researcher; founder of AVERI (AI Verification Initiative); former OpenAI Head of Policy Research

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votes For and says:

These and other commonsense proposals, such as protecting AI whistleblowers who disclose safety incidents directly to the government, deserve vigorous support.
AI Verified source (Aug 21, 2026)

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Government of California
Executive government of the State of California, publishing official AI policy and procurement standards.

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votes For and says:

Signing Senate Bill 53, the Transparency in Frontier Artificial Intelligence Act, in 2025, requiring the largest frontier AI developers to publicly disclose their safety frameworks, report certain critical safety incidents to the state, and protect w...
more AI Verified source (Aug 10, 2026)

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John Curtis
U.S. Senator from Utah; former U.S. Representative; member of the Senate Commerce Committee

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votes For and says:

Whistleblower protections to encourage employees to report violations and protect those who expose harmful practices.
AI Verified source (Aug 5, 2026)

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European AI Office
European Commission body implementing and enforcing the EU AI Act.

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votes For and says:

The AI Act Whistleblower Tool empowers individuals to securely submit a report and contribute directly to make AI in Europe safe transparent, and trustworthy. [...] Alongside with the secure tool, the AI Office commits itself to a high standard of co...
more AI Verified source (Jul 31, 2026)

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Indah Harahap
Manager of the AI Whistleblower Initiative and editor of its Inside AI newsletter.

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votes For and says:

The AI Whistleblower Protection Act ... is the first piece of US federal legislation written specifically to protect the people inside AI companies who raise safety concerns. [...] We support the bill, and we want to see it enacted—ideally in a stren...
more AI Verified source (Jul 30, 2026)

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AFL-CIO Tech Institute
AFL-CIO policy institute focused on technology’s effects on workers and workplace policy.

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votes For and says:

Several states have passed bills that protect whistleblowers who report critical AI safety incidents from retaliation. These protections matter so that workers can report risks before harms occur. Employees closest to monitoring AI systems can spot d...
more AI Verified source (Jul 30, 2026)

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Patrick Higgins
Managing Director of the LaCross Institute for Ethical AI in Business at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business.

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votes For and says:

Leaders need to know what their systems are doing, create channels for people across the organization to share concerns and build governance that can adapt as the technology and its uses change.
AI Verified source (Jul 30, 2026)

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Chris Lehane
OpenAI chief global affairs officer

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votes For and says:

Companies developing the most capable systems should meet clear requirements, including independent audits, incident reporting, strong security standards, and whistleblower protections.
AI Verified source (Jul 15, 2026) 1 of 2

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Office of Governor JB Pritzker
Official communications office of Illinois Governor JB Pritzker.

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votes For and says:

The Artificial Intelligence Safety Measures Act establishes a framework requiring developers of the largest advanced AI systems to publicly disclose safety practices, report significant safety incidents, and maintain robust compliance processes. The ...
more AI Verified source (Jul 6, 2026)

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State of Illinois
U.S. state government; publisher of official announcements on Illinois artificial intelligence law and policy.

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votes For and says:

The Artificial Intelligence Safety Measures Act establishes a framework requiring developers of the largest advanced AI systems to publicly disclose safety practices, report significant safety incidents, and maintain robust compliance processes. The ...
more AI Verified source (Jul 6, 2026) 1 of 2

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Maria Collett
Pennsylvania state senator representing the 12th District.

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votes For and says:

In addition, significant AI safety incidents must be reported to state officials within 72 hours of discovery, and whistleblower protections must be honored for employees who raise legitimate safety concerns.
AI Verified source (Jul 6, 2026)

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Office of the Governor of Illinois
Official press office of the Governor of Illinois.

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votes For and says:

The law also creates confidential reporting channels and whistleblower protections for employees raising AI safety concerns.
AI Verified source (Jul 6, 2026)

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Abra Ganz
Head of AI Policy at Pour Demain and researcher on AI oversight and whistleblower protections.

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votes For and says:

Whistleblower protections are a critical mechanism for surfacing risks and have existed across many US states and the federal level for decades – albeit with strongly varying degrees of effectiveness.
AI Verified source (Jul 2, 2026)

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Stephen M. Kohn
Whistleblower-rights attorney

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votes For and says:

From that incident, it became absolutely clear that you need an AI whistleblower bill, a law to protect insiders, corporate employees within that industry.
AI Verified source (Jul 2026) 1 of 2

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Future of Life Institute
Nonprofit on existential risks

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votes For and says:

Strengthen whistleblower protections and align culture with policy.
AI Verified source (Jul 2026)

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Justin Smulison
Journalist and writer for the National Whistleblower Center covering AI whistleblower policy.

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votes For and says:

The AI Whistleblower Protection Act is rooted in a simple but urgent principle: as technology becomes more powerful, the people who raise concerns about it must be protected. AI systems can amplify bias, obscure accountability, and cause harm at a ma...
more AI Verified source (Jun 21, 2026) 1 of 2

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National Whistleblower Center
Whistleblower advocacy nonprofit

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votes For and says:

As AI becomes more embedded in modern culture and global infrastructure, the need for accountability has become increasingly necessary. That is why the passage of the AI Whistleblower Protection Act (AIWPA) is one of the National Whistleblower Center...
more AI Verified source (Jun 21, 2026) 1 of 2

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Adam Schiff
U.S. Senator from California; former House Intelligence Committee chair

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votes For and says:

Establish whistleblower protections drawn from the NSM on AI, ensuring personnel can report AI misuse, civil liberties concerns, and safety violations without fear of reprisal, with anonymous and confidential reporting procedures.
AI Verified source (Jun 8, 2026)

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Lori Trahan
U.S. representative from Massachusetts

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votes For and says:

Require the largest AI companies to publish and comply with safety frameworks, submit to third-party audits, and ensure whistleblowers are protected.
AI Verified source (Jun 1, 2026)

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