Though lawmakers and advocates proposed dozens of bills to regulate artificial intelligence in California this year, none have attracted more disdain from big tech companies, startup founders, and investors than the Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models Act.
In letters to lawmakers, Meta said the legislation, Senate Bill 1047, will “deter AI innovation in California at a time where we should be promoting it,” while Google claimed the bill will make “California one of the world’s least favorable jurisdictions for AI development and deployment.” A letter signed by more than 130 startup founders and incubator Y Combinator goes even further, claiming that “vague language” could “kill California tech.”
Prominent AI researchers are also taking sides. Last week, Yoshua Bengio and former Google AI researcher Geoffrey Hinton, who are sometimes called the “godfathers of AI,” came out in support of the bill. Stanford professor and former Google Cloud chief AI scientist Fei-Fei Li, who is often called the “godmother of AI” came out against SB 1047.
The bill, approved 32-1 by the state Senate in May, must survive the Assembly Appropriations suspense file on Thursday and win final approval by Aug. 31 to reach Gov. Gavin Newsom this year.
The bill, introduced by San Francisco Democrat Scott Wiener in February, is sprawling. It...
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