Frontier AI Safety Frameworks and Responsible Scaling Policies

Anthropic published the first Responsible Scaling Policy in September 2023. It introduced AI Safety Levels (ASLs), loosely modeled on biosafety levels, where higher levels require stronger security and deployment safeguards. A later version, in October 2024, restated the policy in terms of capability thresholds and required safeguards and described the role of a Responsible Scaling Officer. OpenAI released its Preparedness Framework as a beta in December 2023. It scored risk in tracked categories, originally including CBRN threats, cybersecurity, persuasion and model autonomy. A 2025 revision reorganized it around High and Critical capability thresholds and dropped persuasion as a tracked category. Google DeepMind published its Frontier Safety Framework in May 2024 and has revised it since. It defines Critical Capability Levels (CCLs) that trigger response plans. At the AI Seoul Summit in May 2024, 16 companies signed the Frontier AI Safety Commitments. They agreed to publish safety frameworks, set thresholds for intolerable risk, and not develop or deploy a model if its risks could not be kept below those thresholds. Many frameworks were published before the Paris AI Action Summit in February 2025. Critics point to several weaknesses. Labs write their own thresholds and can revise them on their own. Wording such as "meaningful uplift" leaves room for interpretation. External verification is limited, and commercial competition gives labs an incentive to read results generously. A common misconception is that these frameworks are laws. Most are voluntary, although this is changing. California's SB 53 requires large frontier developers to publish such a framework, and the EU's General-Purpose AI Code of Practice, a voluntary route to showing compliance with the AI Act, asks signatories to adopt one.