California rejects AI safety bill

California Governor, Gavin Newsom, has vetoed the controversial AI safety bill, SB 1047. The bill, written by Senator Scott Weiner, was designed to hold big tech firms—which are building AI models that cost over $100M—accountable for their safety, requiring them to implement stringent safety protocols (such as an emergency kill switch) to prevent “critical harms.” 

Newman felt that while the bill was “well-intentioned,” it failed to “take into account whether an AI system is deployed in high-risk environments, involves critical decision-making or the use of sensitive data.” He also believed it was too focused on the more powerful, larger AI models, and didn’t address the potential dangers that smaller AI models could cause, giving “the public a false sense of security about controlling this fast-moving technology.”

“Smaller, specialized models may emerge as equally or even more dangerous than the models targeted by SB 1047 - at the potential expense of curtailing the very innovation that fuels advancement in favor of the public good.”

He did, however, agree that there should be safety protocols in place, and enforceable consequences for bad actors, abusing the technology, but the state of California shouldn’t “settle for a solution that is not informed by an empirical trajectory analysis of Al systems and capabilities.”

 His decision has pleased one of the bill's biggest opponents, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, who thanked Newsom, praising him for “recognizing the opportunity and responsibility we all share to enable small entrepreneurs and academia – not big tech – to dominate,” but disappointed Senator Weiner, who thinks this marks “a setback for everyone who believes in oversight of massive corporations that are making critical decisions” affecting public safety and welfare and “the future of the planet.