California Governor Gavin Newsom said there are 38 bills on his desk that would create laws around artificial intelligence on Tuesday, but one looms larger than all of them: SB 1047, California's bill that tries to prevent AI systems from causing catastrophes. For the first time, California's Governor shared how he's thinking about the controversial bill.
In short, he thinks SB 1047 has problems. Newsom said he's interested in AI bills that can solve today's problems without upsetting California's booming AI industry. That's not very promising for the future of SB 1047, which aims to protect against disasters by holding big AI vendors liable if their products are used to cause grievous harm, like bringing down critical infrastructure. At the same time, signing the bill would upset large swaths of the AI industry who want Newsom to veto the bill.
"We've been working over the last couple years to come up with some rational regulation that supports risk taking, but not recklessness," said Newsom in a conversation with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff on Tuesday, on stage at the 2024 Dreamforce conference. "That's challenging now in this space, particularly with SB 1047, because of the sort of outsized impact that legislation could have, and the chilling effect, particularly in the open source community."