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California AI bill becomes a lightning rod–for safety advocates and devs alike

Senate Bill 1047 debate shows regulators need to create legislation that protects against the risks of AI models without stifling innovation.

June amendments to the bill clarified several clauses that had created definitional confusion, but also introduced language that essentially guaranteed the law would primarily be applicable to the largest AI model developers, including Anthropic, Google Deepmind, OpenAI, and Meta, among others. The debate around Senate Bill 1047 highlights an important point: Regulators will need to walk a fine line to create legislation that both protects against the future risks of frontier models —loosely defined as general purpose AI at the cutting edge of advancement—without negatively affecting innovation. Members of the U.S. Congress themselves have acknowledged that they and their colleagues can lack understanding of artificial intelligence and have struggled to reach consensus around the most pertinent types of risks to address, leading to slower rollouts of AI regulatory initiatives.

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