California Bill Proposes Regulating AI at State Level

State Senator Scott Wiener (D-CA) will introduce a new artificial intelligence (AI) bill to the California legislature that targets “frontier” AI systems at the threshold of capability. The bill proposes:

• Systems that require a certain quantity of computing power to train are subject to transparency requirements;
• Establishing legal liability for “those who fail to take appropriate precautions” to prevent unintended consequences and malicious uses of advanced AI systems;
• Mandating security measures to prevent cutting-edge AIs from falling into the hands of foreign states; and
• Calls for California to set up “CalCompute,” a proposed state research cloud that would provide the computing infrastructure necessary for groups outside of big industry, like academia and startups, to do advanced AI work.

However, the so-called "intent bill" is light on details, containing less than three pages, and only gives broad brush-strokes of what a piece of California AI legislation would look like.