All the news about SB 1047, California’s bid to govern AI
Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Getty Images
California lawmakers push to regulate artificial intelligence. California is known for taking on regulatory issues like data privacy and social media content moderation, and its latest target is AI. The state’s legislature recently passed SB 1047, one of the US’s first and most significant frameworks for governing artificial intelligence systems. The bill contains sweeping AI safety requirements aimed at the potentially existential risks of “foundation” AI models trained on vast swaths of human-made and synthetic data.
SB 1047 has proven controversial, drawing criticism from the likes of Mozilla (which expressed concern it would harm the open-source community); OpenAI (which warned it could hamper the AI industry’s growth); and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who called it “well-intentioned but ill informed.” But particularly after an amendment that softened some provisions, it garnered support from other parties. Anthropic concluded that the bill’s “benefits likely outweigh its costs,” while former Google AI lead Geoffrey Hinton called it “a sensible approach” for balancing risks and advancement of the technology.
Governor Gavin Newsom hasn’t indicated whether he will sign SB 1047, so the bill’s future is hazy. But the biggest foundation model companies are based in California, and its passage would affect them all.
Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Getty Images
California lawmakers push to regulate artificial intelligence.
California is known for taking on regulatory issues like data privacy and social media content moderation, and its latest target is AI. The state’s legislature recently passed SB 1047, one of the US’s first and most significant frameworks for governing artificial intelligence systems. The bill contains sweeping AI safety requirements aimed at the potentially existential risks of “foundation” AI models trained on vast swaths of human-made and synthetic data.
SB 1047 has proven controversial, drawing criticism from the likes of Mozilla (which expressed concern it would harm the open-source community); OpenAI (which warned it could hamper the AI industry’s growth); and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who called it “well-intentioned but ill informed.” But particularly after an amendment that softened some provisions, it garnered support from other parties. Anthropic concluded that the bill’s “benefits likely outweigh its costs,” while former Google AI lead Geoffrey Hinton called it “a sensible approach” for balancing risks and advancement of the technology.
Governor Gavin Newsom hasn’t indicated whether he will sign SB 1047, so the bill’s future is hazy. But the biggest foundation model companies are based in California, and its passage would affect them all.