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Steve
Sedlmayr
Co-founder & Principal Software Engineer,
Droidknot LLC
ㅡ
Steve Sedlmayr
116 Marietta Dr
San Francisco, CA 94127
415.489.8534
droidknotgames@gmail.com
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17 SEPTEMBER 2026
Attn: Senate Committee on Business, Professions and Economic
Development
1021 O Street, Suite 3320,
Sacramento, CA 95814
(916)
651-4104
Attn: Senate Committee on Judiciary
1021 O Street, Room 3240,
Sacramento, CA 95814
(916) 651-4113
Dear Chairs Wahab and Umberg, and Members of the Committees,
Droidknot LLC is a two-member, independent game development
studio with more than 30 years of combined experience in the San
Francisco Bay Area technology sector, including at companies like
EA, Netflix, the Office of the CTO at Microsoft and Y-Combinator
Research. We would like to present for your consideration, and
propose our AI labeling standard ARTS–The AI Rating
Transparency System–as a holistic, turn-key disclosure
solution for companies making products containing AI
technology.
The explosion of AI-based products over the past 5 years has
overwhelmed consumers, citizens and legislators alike with a
dizzying array of goods and services that they do not know how to
evaluate. While current legislative efforts frequently rely on
speculative, unscientific, sci-fi metrics emanating from the AI
industry’s marketing efforts, such as
"superintelligence," the ARTS standard provides a
process-comprehensive empirical framework that scores the entire
lifecycle of an AI product—from model training and natural
resource footprint through code production and deployment.
Crucially, our standard provides eight (8) direct regulatory
compliance points out-of-the-box, seamlessly harmonizing with
active domestic and international laws, including the EU AI Act (Article 50), California SB 942, the New York Synthetic Performer Law, and South Korea’s AI Basic Act (KAIBA). It accomplishes this through a human-centric, cascading
information system that scales effortlessly from individual
creators and small indie studios up to enterprise cloud
applications and even robotics, AI devices and autonomous
vehicles. It can be applied to any product that contains AI features.
To assist your committee and legislative analysts in evaluating
this framework, the enclosed packet has been organized into three
sections:
1. This letter.
2. The core policy
brief: An evaluation of the macroeconomic necessity of objective
labeling over blunt, monopolistic software bans.
3. The ARTS
Explainer: A detailed technical whitepaper mapping our 4 Levels of
Detail (LODs), 4 symbolic system safety modifiers, environmental
metrics, and ARTS applied to real-world examples, including a
color-coded matrix displaying exact, human-verified assessments
across 22 distinct, real-world AI technology products.
I look forward to discussing how this turn-key standard can be
utilized to protect consumer awareness and safeguard independent
software innovation within your jurisdiction without creating a
regulatory moat for monopolistic AI corporations. Please contact
me at your earliest convenience to arrange a brief technical
consultation with your policy staff.
Submitted Respectfully,
Steve Sedlmayr,
Co-founder & Principal Software
Engineer, Droidknot LLC
Open-Source & Technical Access
The AI Rating Transparency System (ARTS) is a public-domain
framework released under a Creative Commons Zero (CC0) Universal License. To maintain complete transparency, the live
repository—including raw SVG vector templates for consumer
labels, examples, and the official standard—is publicly
hosted on GitHub.
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Official Standard Repository: github.com/ryamldess/Droidknot-ARTS/
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Digital Standards Gateway: droidknot.com/ARTS
Technical committees and staffers are encouraged to inspect the
repository directly to evaluate how the standard is applied.
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