California lawmakers pass AI safety bill SB 53 — but Newsom could still veto

California’s state senate gave final approval early on Saturday morning to a serious AI security invoice setting new transparency necessities on massive corporations.

As described by its author, state senator Scott Wiener, SB 53 “requires massive AI labs to be clear about their security protocols, creates whistleblower protections for [employees] at AI labs & creates a public cloud to develop compute entry (CalCompute).”

The invoice now goes to California Governor Gavin Newsom to signal or veto. He has not commented publicly on SB 53, however final yr, he vetoed a more expansive safety bill additionally authored by Wiener, whereas signing narrower legislation focusing on points like deepfakes.

On the time, Newsom acknowledged the significance of “defending the general public from actual threats posed by this expertise,” however criticized Wiener’s earlier invoice for making use of “stringent requirements” to massive fashions no matter whether or not they have been “deployed in high-risk environments, [involved] crucial decision-making or the usage of delicate information.”

Wiener stated the brand new invoice was influenced by recommendations from a policy panel of AI experts that Newsom convened after his veto.

Politico also reports that SB 53 was not too long ago amended in order that corporations growing “frontier” AI fashions whereas bringing in lower than $500 million in annual income will solely must disclose excessive degree security particulars, whereas corporations making greater than that might want to present extra detailed studies.

The invoice has been opposed by various Silicon Valley corporations, VC companies, and lobbying teams. In a recent letter to Newsom, OpenAI didn’t point out SB 53 particularly however argued that to keep away from “duplication and inconsistencies,” corporations ought to be thought-about compliant with statewide security guidelines so long as they meet federal or European requirements.

And Andreessen Horowitz’s head of AI coverage and chief authorized officer recently claimed that ”lots of right this moment’s state AI payments — like proposals in California and New York — danger” crossing a line by violating constitutional limits on how states can regulate interstate commerce.

a16z’s co-founders had beforehand pointed to tech regulation as one of many components main them to back Donald Trump’s bid for a second term. The Trump administration and its allies subsequently known as for a 10-year ban on state AI regulation.

Anthropic, in the meantime, has come out in favor of SB 53.

“We’ve got lengthy stated we would like a federal normal,” stated Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark in a post. “However within the absence of that this creates a stable blueprint for AI governance that can’t be ignored.”