Last month, California's state legislature passed the SB 1047: Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models Act. However, it did not clear its final hurdle as Governor Gavin Newsom opted to veto this contentious legislation. The bill aimed to establish safeguards for AI models that incurred costs exceeding $100 million and utilized computational power of at least 10^26 FLOPS. While the bill faced opposition from notable figures such as Meta's chief AI scientist Yann LeCun, along with executives from Google and OpenAI, it received support from Elon Musk.
Newsom's Decision on AI Regulation
Even though Governor Newsom signed 17 bills concerning GenAI technology in the past month, he decided to halt SB 1047 in its current form. Discussing the future of AI regulation in California, he remarked that
"We have a responsibility to protect Californians from potentially catastrophic risks of GenAI deployment. We will thoughtfully — and swiftly — work toward a solution that is adaptable to this fast-moving technology and harnesses its potential to advance the public good."
He acknowledged that while SB 1047 is "well-intentioned," it overlooks critical factors such as the environment in which an AI solution is implemented, the handling of sensitive data, and the nature of decision-making involved. He emphasized that the bill primarily targets the fundamentals of AI systems and concluded that this approach may not effectively shield the public from the potential dangers posed by the technology.
Reactions and Future Prospects
In August, Nancy Pelosi described the California AI bill as "well-intentioned but ill-informed" and was among the first to commend Newsom for his decision to terminate the initiative.
Although a new similar bill is expected to emerge, it will be crafted in collaboration with experts like Fei-Fei Li, Jennifer Tour Chayes, and Tino Cuellar. For those interested in understanding this field better, “Introduction to Generative AI” by Numa Dhamani and Maggie Engler is available on Amazon for $36.99 in Kindle format (currently at a 26% discount), or in paperback for $44.77 (with a 10% discount).
