California Governor Gavin Newsom has vetoed SB 1047, a prominent bill aimed at regulating AI development. Authored by State Senator Scott Wiener, the bill would have held AI developers accountable for implementing safety measures to prevent “critical harms.” The regulations targeted models costing at least $100 million and using 10^26 FLOPS (floating-point operations) during training.
The bill faced strong opposition from Silicon Valley, including companies like OpenAI, prominent technologists like Meta’s chief AI scientist Yann LeCun, and political figures like U.S. Congressman Ro Khanna. However, some of its provisions were modified following input from AI company Anthropic and other critics.
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Despite the state legislature passing SB 1047, opponents hoped for a veto from Newsom, who had expressed concerns about the bill. In his veto statement, Newsom remarked, “While well-intentioned, SB 1047 doesn’t consider whether an AI system operates in high-risk environments, involves critical decision-making, or handles sensitive data. Instead, it imposes stringent standards on even the most basic functions, provided a large system deploys them. I don’t believe this is the right way to protect the public from real dangers posed by AI.”
Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi also criticized the bill, calling it “well-intentioned but misinformed.” After the veto, she commended Newsom for recognizing the importance of empowering small entrepreneurs and academia, rather than big tech, in shaping AI’s future.
Newsom’s office pointed out that in the last 30 days, he had signed 17 (18 by some counts) AI-related bills, further emphasizing his commitment to regulating AI responsibly. He has also sought advice from experts like Fei-Fei Li, Tino Cuéllar, and Jenn… (statement continued).
