California Gov. Gavin Newsom said he has 38 bills on his desk that would regulate artificial intelligence on Tuesday, but there’s one bigger than all of them: Senate Bill 1047, a California bill that attempts to prevent AI systems from causing disasters. For the first time, the California governor has shared his thoughts on the controversial bill.
In short, Newsom thinks Senate Bill 1047 has problems. He said he’s interested in AI bills that can solve today’s problems without upsetting California’s burgeoning AI industry. That doesn’t bode well for the future of Senate Bill 1047, which aims to protect against disaster by holding major AI vendors liable if their products are used to cause serious harm, such as destroying critical infrastructure. At the same time, signing the bill into law would upset large segments of the AI
“We’ve been working over the last couple of years to come up with some sensible regulation that supports risk-taking, but not recklessness,” Newsom said in a conversation with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff on Tuesday, on stage at the Dreamforce 2024 conference. “That’s a challenge right now in this space, especially with SB 1047, because of the enormous impact that legislation can have, the chilling effect, especially in the open source community.”
Newsom added that he had to consider demonstrable risks versus hypothetical risks, later noting that he “can’t solve everything. What can we solve?”
The governor has been heavily criticized for H.R. 1047: The bill attempts to prevent AI from being involved in mass casualty events and cybersecurity incidents costing more than $500 million, but does little to hold tech companies accountable for anything less. Critics of H.R. 1047 have argued that the bill could stifle innovation while failing to address the short-term issues that AI systems are creating today.
Newsom made these remarks to a packed room at a tech conference in the heart of San Francisco. At most tech conferences I’ve been to recently, there’s murmuring in the bathroom line about the many problems with SB 1047. Newsom likely knew what kind of voters were in the audience, and he was probably playing to the crowd.
However, the governor is putting his AI regulation where it belongs. Earlier Tuesday, the California governor signed five bills that address AI problems we’ve already seen in 2024, like AI-generated misinformation in elections and Hollywood studios creating AI-powered versions of actors. These may be the “obvious risks” Newsom is referring to.
“Governor Newsom understands better than anyone the importance of California’s leadership when the federal government won’t act,” Sen. Scott Wiener told TechCrunch. “The governor’s and First Lady’s work to raise awareness of the effects of social media is a direct result of the federal government’s failure to regulate social media. I have full confidence that the governor will give this bill the consideration it deserves.”
Newsom on Tuesday lamented the federal government’s failure to “regulate” the field of artificial intelligence. The governor noted that California has been a leader in regulating technology in the past — especially social media and privacy — and he’s not surprised that people are looking to the state for leadership again. Still, Newsom says he’s careful not to squander California’s early progress on AI.
“[AI] “It’s a space that we dominate, and I want to maintain our dominance,” Newsom said. “At the same time, you feel a deep sense of responsibility to address some of the more extreme concerns that many of us have — even the biggest and most powerful promoters of this technology — and that’s a tough place to be.”
Newsom noted that the impact of signing SB 1047 into law overnight on the AI
The California governor did not explicitly say Tuesday whether he would sign the bill or veto it. He told the Los Angeles Times: He hasn’t made up his mind yet. In this context, OpenAI, Nancy Pelosi, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and big tech trade groups are all pressuring Newsom to reject Senate Bill 1047. Elon Musk and Anthropic, on the other hand, have shown lukewarm enthusiasm, while some AI researchers, such as Yoshua Bengio and Geoffrey Hinton, have fully supported Senate Bill 1047.
Governor Newsom has two weeks to make his decision. Until then, all we have left is a pile of notes that don’t look promising for the future of the bill.