California waters down AI safety bill to appease industry opposition
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California lawmakers have amended a bill that would hold artificial intelligence (AI) firms accountable for the harm caused by their products after the original draft received significant opposition from the industry, including AI firm Anthropic. The Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models Act (SB-1074) seeks to protect whistleblowers and empower the state of California to intervene if it has reason to believe an AI-related catastrophe is going to occur. However, California State Senator Scott Wiener (D-CA), the bill’s sponsor, acknowledged that changes had been made, citing input from San Francisco-based AI safety and research company Anthropic. “While the amendments do not reflect 100 percent of the changes requested by Anthropic – a world leader on both innovation and safety – we accepted a number of very reasonable amendments proposed, and I believe we’ve addressed the core concerns expressed by Anthropic and many others in the industry,” said Wiener, in an August 15 statement. Originally, the bill would have allowed the state to sue firms for negligence over inadequate safety practices, even if the violations didn’t result in a “catastrophic event.” It would have also created a government oversight board responsible for implementing and enforcing safety practices. After negative feedback from the tech industry, including a comprehensive list of suggestions from Anthropic, Weiner claimed his office had now found a happy medium: “These amendments build on significant changes to SB-1047 I made previously to accommodate the unique needs of the open source community, which is an important source of innovation.” Two of the provisions that Anthropic took particular issue with were that AI companies could be sued prior to the establishment of harm and the creation of a new “Frontier Model Division” to police state-of-the-art AI models. But it wasn’t just the industry that voiced concerns. Congressional Representative Zoe…
Filed under: News - @ August 20, 2024 1:20 pm