California AI Regulation Bill Advances to Assembly Vote with Key Amendments
"It's hard to [overstate] just how blindsided startups, founders, and the investor community feel about this bill," Midha said during an interview posted on his company's website. "When it comes to policy-making, especially in technology at the frontier, our legislators should be sitting down and soliciting the opinions of their constituents — which in this case, includes startup founders."
"If this passes in California, it will set a precedent for other states and have rippling consequences inside and outside of the USA — essentially a huge butterfly effect in regard to the state of innovation," he added.
In an open letter on their website ("A statement in opposition to California SB 1047"), members of the AI Alliance, which describes itself as "a community of technology creators, developers, and adopters collaborating to advance safe, responsible AI rooted in open innovation," voiced their concerns about SB 1047.
"While SB 1047 is not targeting open source development specifically, it will affect the open-source community dramatically. The bill requires developers of AI models of 1026 FLOPS or similar performance (as determined by undefined benchmarks) to implement a full shutdown control that would halt operation of the model and all derivative models. Once a model is open sourced and subsequently downloaded by a third party, by design developers no longer have control over a model. Before such a "shutdown switch" provision is passed, we need to understand how it can be done in the context of open source; the bill does not answer that question. No models at 1026 FLOPS are openly available today, but technology is rapidly advancing, and the open ecosystem could evolve alongside it. However, this legislation seems intended to freeze open source AI development at the 2024 level."
Legislative Context
The bill's advancements come amid a backdrop of federal inaction on AI regulation. With the US Congress largely stagnant on technology legislation, California's initiative seeks to preemptively address the risks posed by rapidly advancing AI technologies while fostering a supportive environment for innovation.
Governor Gavin Newsom's administration has also been proactive on AI. The Governor issued an Executive Order last September to prepare for AI's impacts, and his office released a report on AI's potential benefits and harms.
SB 1047 represents a significant step in California's regulatory approach to AI, with its outcome poised to influence both national and global AI policy. The Assembly's vote on Aug. 20 will be a critical juncture in shaping the future of AI regulation in the state.
About the Author
John K. Waters is the editor in chief of a number of Converge360.com sites, with a focus on high-end development, AI and future tech. He's been writing about cutting-edge technologies and culture of Silicon Valley for more than two decades, and he's written more than a dozen books. He also co-scripted the documentary film Silicon Valley: A 100 Year Renaissance, which aired on PBS. He can be reached at [email protected].