2. Folks aren’t automatically liable if their highly capable model is used to do bad things, even catastrophic things. The question is whether they took reasonable measures to prevent that. This bill could have used strict liability, where developers would be liable for catastrophic harms regardless of fault, but that's not what the bill does.
3. Overall it seems pretty reasonable that if your model can cause catastrophic harms (which is not true of current models, but maybe true of future models), then you shouldn’t be releasing models in a way that can predictably allow folks to cause those catastrophic harms.
If people want a detailed write up of what the bill does, I recommend this thorough writeup by Zvi. In my opinion this is a pretty narrow proposal focused at the most severe risks (much more narrow than, e.g., the EU AI act). https://thezvi.substack.com/p/on-the-proposed-california-sb-...