California Governor Gavin Newsom said Tuesday that there are 38 bills being introduced that would enact artificial intelligence legislation, but one stands out as being particularly big: SB 1047, a California bill that aims to prevent AI systems from causing catastrophe. For the first time, the governor has revealed what he thinks about the controversial bill.
In short, he sees problems with SB 1047. Newsom said he's interested in an AI bill that solves today's problems without disrupting California's burgeoning AI industry. That doesn't bode well for the future of SB 1047, which seeks to protect against disasters by holding big AI vendors accountable if their products are used to cause significant harm, such as taking down critical infrastructure. At the same time, signing the bill would upset a majority in the AI industry that has called on Newsom to veto the bill.
“We've been working for the last few years to develop reasonable regulations that support risk-taking but don't support recklessness,” Newsom said Tuesday during a conversation with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff onstage at the 2024 Dreamforce conference. “We're in a difficult position in this space right now, especially with SB 1047, because of the very significant impact that bill could have and the chilling effect it would have, especially on the open source community.”
Newsom went on to say that both identifiable and hypothetical risks must be considered. “You can't solve everything. What can you solve?” he said later.
The governor hit out at a key criticism of SB 1047, which seeks to prevent AI's role in major casualty accidents or cybersecurity events that cost more than $500 million in damages, but does little to hold tech companies accountable for anything less. Critics of SB 1047 argue that while the bill could stifle innovation, it fails to regulate the short-term problems that AI systems currently create.
Governor Newsom made the remarks to a packed audience at an enterprise technology conference in downtown San Francisco. At most tech conferences I've attended recently, the restroom lines are filled with complaints about the many problems with SB 1047. Governor Newsom may have known the type of voters in his audience and was appealing to them.
But governors are putting their money where their mouths are when it comes to AI regulation: Early Tuesday, California's governor signed five bills that address AI problems already occurring in 2024, like AI-generated election misinformation and Hollywood studios creating AI clones of actors. This may be the “demonstrable risk” Newsom is referring to.
At the same time, Governor Newsom on Tuesday lamented the federal government's “regulatory failure” in the field of AI. The governor noted that California has historically led the way in regulating technology, particularly in the areas of social media and privacy, and said he's not surprised people are once again looking to states for leadership.
A spokesperson for California Senator Scott Wiener, the author of SB 1047, did not immediately respond to TechCrunch's request for comment.
“[AI] “This is an area where we have an advantage and I want to maintain that advantage,” Newsom said. “At the same time, I feel a strong sense of responsibility to address some of the more extreme concerns that many of us have, even the biggest and strongest advocates of this technology, and that's a difficult position to be in.”
Newsom hinted that talk that signing SB 1047 would disrupt the AI industry overnight was probably exaggerated, but he noted that the impact of signing the wrong bill over several years could have a significant impact on California's advantage.
California's governor did not say Tuesday whether he would sign or veto the bill. He told the Los Angeles Times that he has not yet made a decision on the bill. OpenAI, Nancy Pelosi, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and major tech industry groups are pressuring Newsom to veto SB 1047. Meanwhile, some highly regarded AI researchers, including Yoshua Bengio and Geoffrey Hinton, are in full support of SB 1047, although Elon Musk and Antropic have expressed less enthusiasm.
Governor Newsom has two weeks to make a decision, and in the meantime, there's been a ton of bleak rhetoric about the bill's future.