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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

California governor Gavin Newsom vetoed the state’s controversial AI safety law known as ‘Senate Bill 1047’ yesterday (29 September).

Newsom said he that did not think this legislation would be the best approach to protect the public from threats posed by AI.

“While well-intentioned, SB 1047 does not take into account whether an AI system is deployed in high-risk environments, involves critical decision-making or the use of sensitive data.

“Instead, the bill applies stringent standards to even the most basic functions — so long as a large system deploys it.”

Marred in controversy since its introduction earlier this year, the bill has been opposed by many – including politician Nancy Pelosi who called the bill “well-intentioned but ill-informed” and Silicon Valley heavyweights, including OpenAI which argued for a federal bill rather than a state one, accelerator Y Combinator, which signed a letter along with around 140 start-ups, stating that the bill could “threaten the vibrancy of California’s technology economy,” and AI start-up Anthropic which made suggestions that led to amendments in the bill.

Introduced earlier this year by state senator Scott Wiener, the bill’s aim was to ensure the safe development of AI systems by putting more responsibilities on developers.

[...] Instead of SB 1047, governor Newsom announced that he has enlisted expert assistance, who will “help California develop workable guardrails for deploying GenAI”.

The team of experts include the ‘godmother of AI’ Dr Fei-Fei Li; Tino Cuéllar, a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Social and Ethical Implications of Computing Research; and Jennifer Tour Chayes, dean of the College of Computing, Data Science and Society at UC Berkeley.

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