Reuters
—
California Governor Gavin Newsom on Sunday vetoed a hotly contested artificial intelligence safety bill after the tech industry voiced opposition to the move, saying it could drive AI companies out of the state and stifle innovation. was activated.
Newsom asked leading experts in generative AI to help California “develop viable guardrails” focused on “developing empirical, science-based trajectory analysis.” said. He also ordered state agencies to expand their assessment of potential catastrophic risks associated with the use of AI.
Newsom asked leading experts in generative AI to help California “develop viable guardrails” focused on “developing empirical, science-based trajectory analysis.” said. He also ordered state agencies to expand their assessment of potential catastrophic risks associated with the use of AI.
Generative AI that can create text, photos, and videos in response to free-form prompts could make some jobs obsolete, upend elections, and potentially overwhelm humans with devastating effects. This is causing both anxiety and excitement at the same time.
Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener, the bill’s author, said the bill is needed to protect the public before advances in AI get out of hand or out of control. California’s AI industry is growing rapidly, and some leaders are questioning the future of these companies in the state if the bill becomes law.
Wiener said Sunday that the veto would make California less safe and mean “companies looking to develop extremely powerful technologies will not be legally bound.” He added: “Voluntary efforts by industry are unenforceable and rarely work out well for the public.”
“We cannot afford to wait for a catastrophe to occur before taking action to protect our people,” Newsom said, adding, “We cannot compromise on solutions that are not based on AI systems and empirical trajectory analysis of AI systems.” “We have to do that,” he added. ability. ”
Newsom said he will work with the Legislature on an AI bill in the next Congress. This comes as legislation to create safeguards stalls in the US Congress and the Biden administration moves forward with regulatory AI oversight proposals.
“A California-only approach could very well be justified, especially in the absence of federal action by Congress,” Newsom said.
The Chamber of Progress, a tech industry coalition, praised Newsom’s veto, saying, “California’s high-tech economy has always thrived on competition and openness.”
Among other things, the measure would require safety testing for many cutting-edge AI models that cost more than $100 million to develop or require a specified amount of computing power. Developers of AI software operating in the state would also have been required to outline how to turn off their AI models, effectively a kill switch.
The bill would create a state agency to oversee the development of so-called “frontier models” that go beyond the capabilities of state-of-the-art existing models.
The bill faced strong opposition from a wide range of groups. Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Microsoft-backed OpenAI, and Metaplatforms all develop generative AI models and had expressed concerns about the proposal.
Some Democrats in Congress, including Representative Nancy Pelosi, also objected. Supporters include Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who also runs an AI company called xAI. Amazon-backed Anthropic said the benefits of the bill likely outweigh the costs, but added there were still concerns and ambiguities.
Separately, Newsom signed a bill requiring the state to assess the potential threat generative AI poses to California’s critical infrastructure.
Newsom said the state has analyzed energy infrastructure risks and the electricity sector providers it has convened so far, and plans to do a similar risk assessment next year for water infrastructure providers and then for the communications sector. .
