A California AI safety bill has received support from the Los Angeles Times, the 5th largest newspaper in the United States.
In a piece released on Thursday, the editorial board explained that, given the long list of experts warning about the potentially catastrophic risks of unfettered AI development, SB 1047 can ‘serve as an important backstop’ whilst Americans wait for the federal government to regulate the technology.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman asked the US Congress to regulate AI in May 2023, but the company recently came out in opposition of SB 1047, claiming it would ‘slow the pace of innovation’. They join the fierce opposition from tech giant Meta and venture capital firm a16z, who have lied multiple times to politicians in an attempt to downplay the risks of AI and stall regulatory efforts.
The LA Times argue that OpenAI’s change of tune are nothing new for big tech:
There are risks to sitting on the sidelines for too long. Today, lawmakers are still playing catch-up on data privacy and attempting to curb harm on social media platforms. This isn’t the first time big tech leaders have publicly professed that they welcome regulation on their products, but then lobbied fiercely to block specific proposals.
Anthropic have also come out in favour of SB 1047 this week, after some of their proposed amendments to the bill were accepted. CEO Dario Amodei wrote in a letter to Governor Newsom (who will have the power to veto the bill) that ‘SB 1047 is substantially improved, to the point where we believe its benefits likely outweigh its costs’.
Read more: SB 1047 ‘reasonable first step’ according to Hinton, Bengio, and Russell