Governor Newsom on California AI bill SB 1047: 'I can't solve for everything'

California governor Gavin Newsom said there are 38 bills on his desk that would create laws around artificial intelligence on Tuesday, but one looms larger than all of them: SB 1047, California's bill that tries to prevent AI systems from causing catastrophes. For the first time, California's governor shared what he's thinking about the controversial bill.

In short, he thinks SB 1047 has problems. Newsom said he's interested in AI bills that can solve today's problems without upsetting California's booming AI industry. That's not very promising for the future of SB 1047, which aims to protect against disasters by holding big AI vendors liable if their products are used to cause grievous harm, like bringing down critical infrastructure. At the same time, signing the bill would upset large swaths of the AI industry who want Newsom to veto the bill.

"We've been working over the last couple years to come up with some rational regulation that supports risk-taking, but not recklessness," said Newsom in a conversation with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff on Tuesday, onstage at the 2024 Dreamforce conference. "That's challenging now in this space, particularly with SB 1047, because of the sort of outsized impact that legislation could have, and the chilling effect, particularly in the open source community."

Newsom went on to say he must consider demonstrable risks versus hypothetical risks. He later noted, "I can't solve for everything. What can we solve for?"

The governor hit on a major criticism of SB 1047: The bill tries to prevent AI's role in mass casualty events and cybersecurity events costing more than $500 million but does little to hold tech companies accountable for anything short of that. Critics of SB 1047 have argued that the bill could stifle innovation, while failing to regulate the short-term issues AI systems are creating today.

Newsom gave these remarks to a room full of people attending an enterprise technology conference in the heart of San Francisco. At most tech conferences I've attended recently, you hear rumblings in the bathroom line about SB 1047's many problems. Newsom likely knew which kind of voters were in the audience and may have been playing to the crowd.

That said, the governor is putting his AI regulation where his mouth is. Earlier on Tuesday, Newsom signed five bills into law that address AI problems we've already seen play out in 2024, such as AI-generated election misinformation and Hollywood studios creating AI clones of actors. These may be the "demonstrable risks" Newsom is referencing.

“Governor Newsom understands better than anyone the importance of California’s leadership when the federal government does not step up," said state senator Scott Wiener in a statement to TechCrunch. "The Governor and the First Partner’s work to bring awareness to the impacts of social media is a direct result of the federal government’s failure to regulate social media. I have every confidence the Governor will give this bill the consideration it deserves.”

Newsom lamented on Tuesday how the federal government has "failed to regulate" in the AI space. The governor noted how California has previously led on tech regulation — namely, social media and privacy — and he isn't surprised that people are looking to the state for leadership again. However, Newsom says he's being careful not to squander California's early lead in AI.

"[AI] is a space where we dominate, and I want to maintain our dominance," said Newsom. "At the same time, you feel a deep sense of responsibility to address some of the more extreme concerns that many of us have — even the biggest and strongest promoters of this technology have — and that's a difficult place to land."

Newsom alluded that it's probably been overstated how signing SB 1047 would disrupt the AI industry overnight. However, he noted how the impact of signing the wrong bills over the course of a few years could profoundly impact California's dominance.

The California governor didn't explicitly say on Tuesday whether he would sign or veto the bill. He told the LA Times he has yet to make up his mind on the bill. OpenAI, Nancy Pelosi, the United States Chamber of Commerce, and Big Tech trade groups are pushing Newsom to veto SB 1047. On the other side, Elon Musk and Anthropic have expressed tepid enthusiasm, while some well-regarded AI researchers, such as Yoshua Bengio and Geoffrey Hinton, have fully endorsed SB 1047.

"We remain hopeful that the Governor will sign SB 1047 because he understands the bottom line - if California won’t lead on safe and responsible AI innovation, who will?," said Nathan Calvin, senior policy counsel for the Center for AI Safety Action Fund, in a statement to TechCrunch.

Governor Newsom has two weeks to make his decision. Until then, we're left with a pile of remarks that don't look promising for the bill's future.