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Governor Newsom vetoed the bill on September 29, 2024
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This TechCrunch article covers the high-profile veto of California's SB 1047, a pivotal moment in US AI governance debates about whether and how to regulate frontier AI model development at the state level.
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Summary
California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed SB 1047 on September 29, 2024, a landmark AI safety bill authored by State Senator Scott Wiener that would have required companies developing large AI models to implement safety protocols to prevent 'critical harms.' The veto halted what would have been one of the most significant state-level AI regulatory frameworks in the US, applying liability to developers of frontier AI models above certain compute thresholds.
Key Points
- •SB 1047 would have made AI developers liable for implementing safety protocols to prevent 'critical harms' from their models
- •The bill targeted large frontier models above specific compute/cost thresholds, exempting smaller models
- •Governor Newsom's veto was controversial, drawing criticism from AI safety advocates and praise from much of the tech industry
- •The veto reflects ongoing tension between AI innovation interests and precautionary safety regulation at the state level
- •Senator Scott Wiener authored the bill; its defeat signals challenges for comprehensive state-level AI safety legislation in the US
Cited by 2 pages
| Page | Type | Quality |
|---|---|---|
| Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models Act | Policy | 66.0 |
| Failed and Stalled AI Proposals | Analysis | 63.0 |
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Gov. Newsom vetoes California’s controversial AI bill, SB 1047 | TechCrunch
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Gov. Newsom vetoes California’s controversial AI bill, SB 1047
Anthony Ha
2:07 PM PDT · September 29, 2024
California Governor Gavin Newsom has vetoed SB 1047 , a high-profile bill that would have regulated the development of AI.
The bill was authored by State Senator Scott Wiener and would have made companies that develop AI models liable for implementing safety protocols to prevent “critical harms.” The rules would only have applied to models that cost at least $100 million and use 10^26 FLOPS (floating point operations, a measure of computation) during training.
SB 1047 was opposed by many in Silicon Valley, including companies like OpenAI, high-profile technologists like Meta’s chief AI scientist Yann LeCun, and even Democratic politicians such as U.S. Congressman Ro Khanna. That said, the bill had also been amended based on suggestions by AI company Anthropic and other opponents.
While California’s state legislature passed SB 1047, opponents were holding out hope that Newsom might veto it — and indeed, he’d already indicated that he had reservations about the bill.
In a statement about today’s veto, Newsom said, “While well-intentioned, SB 1047 does not take into account whether an AI system is deployed in high-risk environments, involves critical decision-making or the use of sensitive data. Instead, the bill applies stringent standards to even the most basic functions — so long as a large system deploys it. I do not believe this is the best approach to protecting the public from real threats posed by the technology.”
Congresswoman and longtime House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had also criticized the bill as “well-intentioned but ill-informed.” After the veto was announced, she praised Newsom “for recognizing the opportunity and responsibility we all share to enable small entrepreneurs and academia – not big tech – to dominate.”
In the same announcement, Newsom’s office noted that he’s signed 17 bills ( 18, by our count ) around the regulation and deployment of AI technology in the last 30 days, and it said he’s asked experts such as Fei-Fei Li , Tino Cuéllar , and Jennifer Tour Chayes to “help California develop workable guardrails for deploying GenAI.” (Known a
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