23 ms·
Gavin Newsom vetoes SB 1047
- JoeAltmaier 2y agoPerhaps worried that draconian restriction on new technology is not gonna help bring Silicon Valley back to preeminence.
- jprete 2y ago"The Democrat decided to reject the measure because it applies only to the biggest and most expensive AI models and doesn’t take into account whether they are deployed in high-risk situations, he said in his veto message." That doesn't mean you're wrong, but it's not what Newsom signaled.
- mhuffman 2y ago>and doesn’t take into account whether they are deployed in high-risk situations Am I out of the loop here? What "high-risk" situations do they have in mind for LLM's?
- jeffbee 2y agoImagine the only thing you know about AI came from the opening voiceover of Terminator 2 and you are a state legislator. Now you understand the origin of this bill perfectly.
- giantg2 2y agoMy guess is anything involving direct human safety - medicine, defense, police... but who knows.
- SonOfLilit 2y agoIt's not about current LLMs, it's about future, much more advanced models, that are capable of serious hacking or other mass-casualty-causing activities. o-1 and AlphaProof are proofs of concept for agentic models. Imagine them as GPT-1. The GPT-4 equivalent might be a scary technology to let roam the internet. It would have no effect on current models.
- tbrownaw 2y agoIt looks like it would cover an ordinary chatbot than can answer "how do I $THING" questions, where $THING is both very bad and is also beyond what a normal person could dig up with a search engine. It's not based on any assumptions about the future models having any capabilities beyond providing information to a user.
- whimsicalism 2y agoeveryone in the safety space has realized that it is much easier to get legislators/the public to care if you say that it will be “bad actors using the AI for mass damage” as opposed to “AI does damage on its own” which triggers people’s “that’s sci-fi and i’m ignoring it” reflex.
- SonOfLilit 2y agoThings you could dig up with a search engine are explicitly not covered, see my other comment quoting the bill (ctrl+f critical harm).
- tmpz22 2y agoMedical and legal industries are both trying to apply AI to their administrative practices. It’s absolutely awful but they’re so horny for profits they’re trying anyways.
- tbrownaw 2y agoThat concept does not appear to be part of the bill, and was only mentioned in the quote from the governor. Presumably someone somewhere has a variety of proposed definitions, but I don't see any mention of any particular ones.
- edm0nd 2y agoHealth insurance companies using it to approve/deny claims. The large ones are processing millions of claims a day.
- JoshTriplett 2y agoOnly applying to the biggest models is the point; the biggest models are the inherently high-risk ones. The larger they get, the more that running them at all is the "high-risk situation". Passing this would not have been a complete solution, but it would have been a step in the right direction. This is a huge disappointment.
- jpk 2y ago> running them at all is the "high-risk situation" What is the actual, concrete concern here? That a model "breaks out", or something? The risk with AI is not in just running models, the risk is becoming overconfident in them, and then putting them in charge of real-world stuff in a way that allows them to do harm. Hooking a model up to an effector capable of harm is a deliberate act requiring assurance that it doesn't harm -- and if we should regulate anything, it's that. Without that, inference is just making datacenters warm. It seems shortsighted to set an arbitrary limit on model size when you can recklessly hook up a smaller, shittier model to something safety-critical, and cause all the havoc you want.
- pkage 2y agoThere is no concrete concern past "models that can simulate thinking are scary." The risk has always been connecting models to systems which are safety critical, but for some reason the discourse around this issue has been more influenced by Terminator than OSHA. As a researcher in the field, I believe there's no risk beyond overconfident automation---and we already have analogous legislation for automations, for example in what criteria are allowable and not allowable when deciding whether an individual is eligible for a loan.
- KoolKat23 2y agoWell it's a mix of concerns, the models are general purpose, there are plenty of areas regulation does not exist or is being bypassed. Can't access a prohibited chemical, no need to worry the model can tell you how to synthesize it from other household chemicals etc.
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- comp_throw7 2y agoHe's dissembling. He vetoed the bill because VCs decided to rally the flag; if the bill had covered more models he'd have been more likely to veto it, not less. It's been vaguely mindblowing to watch various tech people & VCs argue that use-based restrictions would be better than this, when use-based restrictions are vastly more intrusive, economically inefficient, and subject to regulatory capture than what was proposed here.
- jart 2y agoIf you read Gavin Newsom's statement, it sounds like he agrees with Terrance Tao's position, which is that the government should regulate the people deploying AI rather than the people inventing AI. That's why he thinks it should be stricter. For example, you wouldn't want to lead people to believe that AI in health care decisions is OK so long as it's smaller than 10^26 flops. Read his full actual statement here: https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/SB-1047-Veto-Message.pdf https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/SB-1047-Ve...
- Terr_ 2y ago> the government should regulate the people deploying AI rather than the people inventing AI Yeah, there's no point having system that is made the most scrupulous of standards and then someone else deploys it in an evil way. (Which in some cases can be done simply by choosing to do the opposite of whatever a good model recommends.)
- m463 2y agoUnfortunately he also veto'd AB3048 which allowed consumers a direct way to opt-out of data sharing. https://digitaldemocracy.calmatters.org/bills/ca_202320240ab3048 https://digitaldemocracy.calmatters.org/bills/ca_202320240ab...
- brianjking 2y agohttps://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/californias-gavin-newsom-vetoes-controversial-ai-safety-bill-d526f621?st=Jxq3wa&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/californias-gavin-newsom-vetoes-...
- dang 2y agoThanks! The WSJ article was the submitted URL, but I've changed it to the governor's statement now. Interested readers will probably want to look at both.
- guywithahat 2y agoWhy would you change it? The WSJ article already contains his reasoning, plus a lot of other interesting content from major players
- dang 2y agoSomeone emailed and suggested it. I looked at the pdf and it seemed to be more substantive than the usual political statement, so I sort of trusted that it would be better. Also it's not paywalled. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41690454 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41690454 remains pinned to the top of the thread, so people have the opportunity to read both. (Actually we usually prefer the best third-party article to press releases, but nothing's perfectly consistent.)
- freedomben 2y agoFWIW I think you made the right call here. The PDF is substantive, primary, and has no paywall. The pinned WSJ article at the top gives best of both worlds.
- dang 2y agoIt'll be better when we implement proper URL aggregation, which, you never know, may happen
- dang 2y agoRelated. Others? OpenAI, Anthropic, Google employees support California AI bill - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41540771 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41540771 - Sept 2024 (26 comments) Y Combinator, AI startups oppose California AI safety bill - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40780036 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40780036 - June 2024 (8 comments) California AI bill becomes a lightning rod–for safety advocates and devs alike - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40767627 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40767627 - June 2024 (2 comments) California Senate Passes SB 1047 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40515465 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40515465 - May 2024 (42 comments) California residents: call your legislators about AI bill SB 1047 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40421986 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40421986 - May 2024 (11 comments) Misconceptions about SB 1047 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40291577 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40291577 - May 2024 (35 comments) California Senate bill to crush OpenAI competitors fast tracked for a vote - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40200971 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40200971 - April 2024 (16 comments) SB-1047 will stifle open-source AI and decrease safety - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40198766 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40198766 - April 2024 (190 comments) Call-to-Action on SB 1047 – Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models Act - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40192204 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40192204 - April 2024 (103 comments) On the Proposed California SB 1047 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39347961 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39347961 - Feb 2024 (115 comments)
- voidfunc 2y agoIt was a dumb law so... good on a politician for doing the smart thing for once.
- x3n0ph3n3 2y agoGiven what Scott Wiener did with restaurant fees, it's hard to trust his judgement on any legislation. He clearly prioritizes monied interests over the general populace.
- gotoeleven 2y agoThis guy is a menace. Among his other recent bills are ones to require cars not be able to go more than 10mph over the speed limit (watered down to just making a terrible noise when they do) and to decriminalize intentionally giving someone AIDs. I know this sounds like hyperbole.. how could this guy keep getting elected?? But its not, it's california!
- baggy_trough 2y agoScott Wiener is literally a demon in human form.
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- microbug 2y agowho could've predicted this?
- jquery 2y agoThe law was passed knowing it would make bigots uncomfortable. That's an intended effect, if not a primary one, at least a secondary one.
- microbugged 2y ago
- simonw 2y agoAlso on The Verge: https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/29/24232172/california-ai-safety-bill-1047-vetoed-gavin-newsom https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/29/24232172/california-ai-sa...
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- davidu 2y agoThis is a massive win for tech, startups, and America.
- noziopests 2y ago[flagged]
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- khazhoux 2y agoThe US is the world leader in AI technology. Defeating a bad AI bill is good for the US.
- cornercasechase 2y agoI think tying nationalism to AI harms us all.
- cornercasechase 2y agoIt was a bad bill but your gross nationalism is even worse. 1 step forward, 10 steps back.
- richwater 2y ago> gross nationalism How on earth did you get that from the original posters comment?
- cornercasechase 2y ago“Win for America” is gross nationalism. Zero sum thinking with combative implications.
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- SonOfLilit 2y agoA bill laying the groundwork to ensure the future survival of humanity by making companies on the frontier of AGI research responsible for damages or deaths caused by their models, was vetoed because it doesn't stifle competition with the big players enough and because we don't want companies to be scared of letting future models capable of massive hacks or creating mass casualty events handle their customer support. Today humanity scored a self-goal. edit: I'm guessing I'm getting downvoted because people don't think this is relevant to our reality. Well, it isn't. This bill shouldn't scare anyone releasing a GPT-4 level model: > The bill he vetoed, SB 1047, would have required developers of large AI models to take “reasonable care” to ensure that their technology didn’t pose an “unreasonable risk of causing or materially enabling a critical harm.” It defined that harm as cyberattacks that cause at least $500 million in damages or mass casualties. Developers also would have needed to ensure their AI could be shut down by a human if it started behaving dangerously. What's the risk? How could it possibly hack something causing $500m of damages or mass casualties? If we somehow manage to build a future technology that _can_ do that, do you think it should be released?
- atemerev 2y agoOh come on, the entire bill was against open source models, it’s pure business. “AI safety”, at least of the X-risk variety, is a non-issue.
- whimsicalism 2y ago> “AI safety”, at least of the X-risk variety, is a non-issue. i have no earthly idea why people feel so confident making statements like this. at current rate of progress, you should have absolutely massive error bars for what capabilities will like in 3,5,10 years.
- ls612 2y agoNuclear weapons, at least in the quantities they are currently stockpiled, are not an existential risk even for industrial civilization, nevermind the human species. To claim that in 10 years AI will be more dangerous and consequential than the weapons that ushered in the Atomic Age is quite a leap.
- tbrownaw 2y agohttps://legiscan.com/CA/text/SB1047/id/3019694 https://legiscan.com/CA/text/SB1047/id/3019694 So this is the one that would make it illegal to provide open weights for models past a certain size, would make it illegal to sell enough compute power to train such a model without first verifying that your customer isn't going to train a model and then ignore this law, and mandates audit requirements to prove that your models won't help people cause disasters and can be turned off.
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- timr 2y agoThe proposed law was so egregiously stupid that if you live in California, you should seriously consider voting for Anthony Weiner's opponent in the next election. The man cannot be trusted with power -- this is far from the first ridiculous law he has championed. Notably, he was behind the (blatantly unconstitutional) AB2098, which was silently repealed by the CA state legislature before it could be struck down by the courts: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ncla-victory-gov-newsom-repeals-182900581.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ncla-victory-gov-newsom-repea... https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/COVID-misinformation-AB-2098-17530946.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/COVID-... (Folks, this isn't a partisan issue. Weiner has a long history of horrendously bad judgment and self-aggrandizement via legislation. I don't care which side of the political spectrum you are on, or what you think of "AI safety", you should want more thoughtful representation than this.)
- johnnyanmac 2y ago>you should want more thoughtful representation than this. Your opinion on what "thoughtful representation" is is what makes this point partisan. Regardless, he's in until 2028 so it'll be some time before that vote can happen. Also, important Nitpick, it's Scott Weiner. Anthony Weiner (no relation AFAIK) was in New York and has a much more... Public controversy.
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- choppaface 2y agoThe Apple Intelligence demos showed Apple is likely planning to use on-device models for ad targeting, and Google / Facebook will certainly respond. Small LLMs will help move unwanted computation onto user devices in order to circumvent existing data and privacy laws. And they will likely be much more effective since they’ll have more access and more data. This use case is just getting started, hence SB 1047 is so short-sighted. Smaller LLMs have dangers of their own.
- jimjimjim 2y agoThank you. For some reason I hadn't thought of the advertising angle with local LLMs but you are right! For example, why is Microsoft hell-bent on pushing Recall onto windows? Answer: targeted advertising.
- seltzered_ 2y agoIs part of the issue the concern that runaway ai computing would just happen outside of california? There's another important county election in Sonoma happening about CAFOs where part of the issue is that you may get environmental progress locally, but just end up exporting the issue to another state with lax rules: https://www.kqed.org/news/12006460/the-sonoma-ballot-measure-that-could-change-the-farm-industry https://www.kqed.org/news/12006460/the-sonoma-ballot-measure...
- alhirzel 2y agoLike all laws, there will certainly be those who evade compliance geographically. A well-written law will be looked to as a precedent or "head start" for new places that end up wanting regulatory functions. I feel like the EU and California often end up on this "leading edge" with regard to technology and privacy. While this can seem like a futile position to be in, it paves the way and is a required step for a good law to find a global foothold.
- metadat 2y agohttps://archive.today/22U12 https://archive.today/22U12
- dredmorbius 2y agoHard paywall.
- worstspotgain 2y agoExcellent move by Newsom. We have a very active legislature, but it's been extremely bandwagon-y in recent years. I support much of Wiener's agenda, particularly his housing policy, but this bill was way off the mark. It was basically a torpedo against open models. Market leaders like OpenAI and Anthropic weren't really worried about it, or about open models in general. Its supporters were the also-rans like Musk [1] trying to empty out the bottom of the pack, as well as those who are against any AI they cannot control, such as antagonists of the West and wary copyright holders. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2024/08/26/elon-musk-unexpectedly-offers-support-for-californias-ai-bill/ https://techcrunch.com/2024/08/26/elon-musk-unexpectedly-off...
- SonOfLilit 2y agowhy would Google, Microsoft and OpenAI oppose a torpedo against open models? Aren't they positioned to benefit the most?
- worstspotgain 2y agoIf there was just one quasi-monopoly it would have probably supported the bill. As it is, the market leaders have the competition from each other to worry about. Getting rid of open models wouldn't let them raise their prices much.
- SonOfLilit 2y agoSo if it's not them, who is the hidden commercial interest sponsoring an attack on open source models that cost >$100mm to train? Or does Wiener just genuinely hate megabudget open source? Or is it an accidental attack, aimed at something else? At what?
- worstspotgain 2y agoLike I said, supporters included wary copyright holders and the bottom-market also-rans like Musk. If your model is barely holding up against Llama, what's the point of staying in.
- SonOfLilit 2y agoI wondered if the article was over-dramatizing what risks were covered by the bill, so I read the text: (g) (1) “Critical harm” means any of the following harms caused or materially enabled by a covered model or covered model derivative: (A) The creation or use of a chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapon in a manner that results in mass casualties. (B) Mass casualties or at least five hundred million dollars ($500,000,000) of damage resulting from cyberattacks on critical infrastructure by a model conducting, or providing precise instructions for conducting, a cyberattack or series of cyberattacks on critical infrastructure. (C) Mass casualties or at least five hundred million dollars ($500,000,000) of damage resulting from an artificial intelligence model engaging in conduct that does both of the following: (i) Acts with limited human oversight, intervention, or supervision. (ii) Results in death, great bodily injury, property damage, or property loss, and would, if committed by a human, constitute a crime specified in the Penal Code that requires intent, recklessness, or gross negligence, or the solicitation or aiding and abetting of such a crime. (D) Other grave harms to public safety and security that are of comparable severity to the harms described in subparagraphs (A) to (C), inclusive. (2) “Critical harm” does not include any of the following: (A) Harms caused or materially enabled by information that a covered model or covered model derivative outputs if the information is otherwise reasonably publicly accessible by an ordinary person from sources other than a covered model or covered model derivative. (B) Harms caused or materially enabled by a covered model combined with other software, including other models, if the covered model did not materially contribute to the other software’s ability to cause or materially enable the harm. (C) Harms that are not caused or materially enabled by the developer’s creation, storage, use, or release of a covered model or covered model derivative.
- handfuloflight 2y agoDoes Newsom believe that an AI model can do this damage autonomously or does he understand it must be wielded and overseen by humans to do so? In that case, how much of an enabler is an AI to meet the destructive ends, when, if the humans can use AI to conduct the damage, they can surely do it without the AI as well. The potential for destruction exists either way but is the concern that AI makes this more accessible and effective? What's the boogeyman? I don't think these models have private information regarding infrastructure and systems that could be exploited.
- hn_throwaway_99 2y agoCurious if anyone can point to some resources that summarize the pros/cons arguments of this legislation. Reading this article, my first thought is that I definitely agree it sounds impossibly vague for a piece of legislation - "reasonable care" and "unreasonable risk" sound like things that could be endlessly litigated. At the same time, > Computer scientists Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, who developed much of the technology on which the current generative-AI wave is based, were outspoken supporters. In addition, 119 current and former employees at the biggest AI companies signed a letter urging its passage. These are obviously highly intelligent people (though I've definitely learned in my life that intelligence in one area, like AI and science, doesn't mean you should be trusted to give legal advice), so I'm curious to know why Hinton and Bengio supported the legislation so strongly.
- throwup238 2y agoCalifornia’s Office of Legislative Counsel always provides a “digest” for every bill as part of its full text: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240SB1047 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm... It’s not an opinionated pros/cons list from the industry but it’s probably the most neutral explanation of what the bill does.
- mmmore 2y agoThe concern is that near future systems will be much more capable than current systems, and by the time they arrive, it may be too late to react. Many people from the large frontier AI companies believe that world-changing AGI is 5 years or less away; see Situational Awareness by Aschbrenner, for example. There's also a parallel concern that AIs could make terrorism easier[1]. Yoshua Bengio has written in detail about his views on AI safety recently[2][3][4]. He seems to put less weight on human level AI being very soon, but says superhuman intelligence is plausible in 5-20 years and says: > Faced with that uncertainty, the magnitude of the risk of catastrophes or worse, extinction, and the fact that we did not anticipate the rapid progress in AI capabilities of recent years, agnostic prudence seems to me to be a much wiser path. Hinton also has a detailed lecture he's been giving recently about the loss of control risk. In general, proponents see this as narrowly tailored bill to somewhat address the worst case worries about loss of control and misuse. [1] https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/28/ai_senate_bioweapon/ https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/28/ai_senate_bioweapon/ [2] https://yoshuabengio.org/2023/05/22/how-rogue-ais-may-arise/ https://yoshuabengio.org/2023/05/22/how-rogue-ais-may-arise/ [3] https://yoshuabengio.org/2023/06/24/faq-on-catastrophic-ai-risks/ https://yoshuabengio.org/2023/06/24/faq-on-catastrophic-ai-r... [4] https://yoshuabengio.org/2024/07/09/reasoning-through-arguments-against-taking-ai-safety-seriously/ https://yoshuabengio.org/2024/07/09/reasoning-through-argume...
- nisten 2y agoImagine being concerned about AI safety and then introducing a bill that had to be ammended to change criminal responsability of AI developers to civil legal responsability for people who are trying to investigate and work openly on models. What's next, going after maintainers of python packages... is attacking transparency itself a good way to make AI safer. Yeah, no, it's f*king idiotic.
- Lonestar1440 2y agoThis is no way to run a state. The Democrat-dominated legislature passes everything that comes before it (and rejects anything that the GOP touches, in committee) and then the Governor needs to veto the looniest 20% of them to keep us from falling into total chaos. This AI bill was far from the worst one. "Vote out the legislators!" but for who... the Republican party? And we don't even get a choice on the general ballot most of the time, thanks to "Open Primaries". It's good that Newsom is wise enough to muddle through, but this is an awful system. https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/news/california-gov-newsom-is-vetoing-1-of-every-5-bills-heres-why/ https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/news/california-gov-ne...
- thinkingtoilet 2y agoIf California was it's own country, it would be one of the biggest most successful countries in the world. Like every where else it has it's problems but it's being run just fine. Objectively, there are many states that are far worse off in any key metric.
- dragonwriter 2y ago[flagged]
- shortrounddev2 2y agoI'd much rather be poor in California than poor in mississippi
- moomoo11 2y agoYep. As someone who moved to California I honestly can’t imagine living anywhere else. This state has so much good social programming and tries to do good for its people. It also helps that most Californians are awesome people. I’ve been in TX (hard nope), NY, NJ, VA, DC, OH, WA, OR, and MD. I would honestly never move out of California there’s no better place I can think of.
- gdiamos 2y agoIf that bill had passed I would have seriously considered moving my AI company out of the state.
- elicksaur 2y agoNothing like this should pass until the legislators can come up with a definition that doesn’t encompass basically every computer program ever written: (b) “Artificial intelligence model” means a machine-based system that can make predictions, recommendations, or decisions influencing real or virtual environments and can use model inference to formulate options for information or action. Yes, they limited the scope of law by further defining “covered model”, but the above shouldn’t be the baseline definition of “Artificial intelligence model.” Text: https://legiscan.com/CA/text/SB1047/id/2919384 https://legiscan.com/CA/text/SB1047/id/2919384
- StarterPro 2y agoWhaaat? The sleazy Governor sided with the tech companies?? I'll have to go get a thesaurus, shocked won't cover how I'm feeling rn.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoIt is strange to see Newsom make good moves like this but then also do things like veto bipartisan supported reporting and transparency for the state’s homeless programs. What is his political strategy exactly?
- scoofy 2y agoNewsom vetoes so many bills that it makes little sense why the legislature should even be taken seriously. Our Dem trifecta state has effectively become captured by the executive.
- dyauspitr 2y agoAs opposed to what? The supermajority red states where gerrymandered counties look like corn mazes and the economy is in the shitter?
- stuaxo 2y agoThis is good - they were trying to legislate against future competitors.
- reducesuffering 2y agotaps the sign "Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war." - Geoffrey Hinton, Yoshua Bengio, Sam Altman, Bill Gates, Vitalik Buterin, Ilya Sutskever, Demis Hassabis "Development of superhuman machine intelligence is probably the greatest threat to the continued existence of humanity. There are other threats that I think are more certain to happen but are unlikely to destroy every human in the universe in the way that SMI could." - Sam Altman "I actually think the risk is more than 50%, of the existential threat." - Geoffrey Hinton "Currently, we don't have a solution for steering or controlling a potentially superintelligent AI, and preventing it from going rogue." - OpenAI "while we are racing towards AGI or even ASI, nobody currently knows how such an AGI or ASI could be made to behave morally, or at least behave as intended by its developers and not turn against humans." - Yoshua Bengio "very soon they're going to be, they may very well be more intelligent than us and far more intelligent than us. And at that point, we will be receding into the background in some sense. We will have handed the baton over to our successors, for better or for worse. But it's happening over a period of a few years. It's like a tidal wave that is washing over us at unprecedented and unimagined speeds. And to me, it's quite terrifying because it suggests that everything that I used to believe was the case is being overturned." - Douglas Hofstadter The Social Dilemna was discussed here with much praise about how profit incentive caused mass societal issues in social media. I'm astounded it's fallen on deaf ears when the same people also made the AI Dilemna describing the parallels coming with AGI: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoVJKj8lcNQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoVJKj8lcNQ
- dyauspitr 2y agoNewsom has been on fire lately.
- sandspar 2y agoNewsom wants to run for president in 4 years; AI companies will be rich in 4 years; Newsom will need donations from rich companies in 4 years.
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- LarsDu88 2y agoTerrible piece of legislation. Glad the governor took it down. This is what regulatory capture looks like. Someone commoditized your product, so you make it illegal for them to continue making your stuff free. Might as well make Linux illegal so everyone is forced to use Microsoft and Apple.
- weebull 2y agoI suspect this was vetoed more for reasons of not wanting to handicap California in the "AI race" than anything else.
- xpe 2y agoI disagree. On this topic, I’m seeing too many ideological and uninformed claims. It is hard for many aspiring AI startup founders to rationally and neutrally assess the AI landscape, pros and cons.
- EasyMark 2y agoIt’s also what makes companies realize there are 49 other states, and nearly a couple hundred companies. California has a rare zeitgeist of tech and universities, but nothing that can’t be reproduced elsewhere with enough dollars and promises
- indigo0086 2y agoLogical Fallacies built into the article headline.
- m3kw9 2y agoAll he needed to see is how Europe is doing with these regulations
- sgt 2y agoWhat is currently happening (or what is the impact) of those regulations in EU?
- renewiltord 2y agoIt’s making it nice for Americans to vacation there.
- tsunamifury 2y agoScott Weiner is a total fraud. He passes hot concept bills then cuts out loopholes for his “friends”. He should be ignored at least and voted out. He’s a total POS.
- water9 2y agoI’m so sick of people Restricting freedoms and access to knowledge in the name safety. Tyranny always comes in the form of it’s for your own good/safety
- dandanua 2y agoSure, why we just not let everyone to build nukes and use them on anyone they don't like? Knowledge is the power. The BEST power you can get.
- anon291 2y agoYou cannot seriously compare nuclear materials delivery / handling to the creation of model weights and computation
- cultureswitch 2y agoBig difference between allowing everyone build nukes and allowing everyone to share the information necessary to build nukes.
- richrichie 2y agoI am disappointed that there are no climate change regulations on AI models. Large scale ML businesses are massive carbon emitters, not counting the whimsical training of NNs by every other IT person. This needs to be regulated.
- anon291 2y agoCalifornia already has cap and trade. There doesn't seem to be a need for further regulation. If there's a problem with emissions, adjust the pricing. That's the purpose of cap and trade.
- richrichie 2y agoThat’s just bad faith reshuffling of “ownership” and does not address the massive carbon emissions produced by the large scale NN industry. It is going to get worse. Not a good look for a group of people otherwise obsessed with climate change.
- cultureswitch 2y agoThe cap and trade principle is sound however legislators have allowed naked scams to legally claim that they are offsetting carbon output. Such as owning a piece of forest land and pinky-swear you're not going to exploit it. This offsets nothing. There is no additional carbon being absorbed out of the atmosphere. Yet this counts as emission reduction.
- dangitman 2y ago[dead]
- az226 2y agoBased.
- pmcf 2y agoNot today, regulatory capture. Not today.
- xyst 2y agoI don’t understand why it was vetoed or why this was even proposed. But leaving comment here to analyze later.
- dazzaji 2y agoAmong the good reasons for SB-1047 to have been vetoed are that it would have regulated the wrong thing. Here’s a great statement of this basic flaw: https://law.mit.edu/pub/regulatesystemsnotmodels https://law.mit.edu/pub/regulatesystemsnotmodels Not speaking for MIT here, but that bill needs a veto and a deep redraft.
- gerash 2y agoI'm trying to parse this proposed law. What does a "full shutdown" mean in the context of an LLM? Stopping the servers from serving requests? It sounds silly idk.
- unit149 2y agoMuch like UAW, a union for industrial machinists and academics, this bill has united VCs and members of the agrarian farming community. Establishing an entity under the guise of the Board of Frontier Models parallels efforts at Jekyll Island under Wilsonian idealism. Technological Keynesianism is on the horizon. These are birth pangs - its first gasps.
- cultureswitch 2y agoSounds interesting, could you translate to English?
- golemiprague 2y ago[dead]
- badsandwitch 2y agoThe race for true AI is on and the fruits are the economic marginalization of humanity. No game theoretic actor in the running will shy away from the race. Anyone who claims they will for the 'good of humanity' is lying or was never a contender. This is information technology we are talking about, it's virtually the exact opposite of nuclear weapons. Refining uranium vs. manufacturing multi purpose silicon and guzzling electricity. Achieving deterrence vs. gaining immeasurable wealth, power and freedom from labor. This race may even be the answer to the Fermi paradox - that there are few individual winners and that they pull up the ladders behind them. This is not the kind of race any legislation will have meaningful effect on. The race is on and you better commit to a faction that may deliver.
- h0l0cube 2y ago> This race may even be the answer to the Fermi paradox The mostly unchallenged popular notion that fleshy human intelligence will still be running the show 100s – let alone 1000s – of years from now is very naive. We're nearing the end of the human supremacy, though most of us won't live to see that end.
- kjkjadksj 2y agoTo be fair fleshy human intelligence has hardly been running the show any more than a bear eating a salmon out of a river thus far. We’d like to consider we can control the world yet any data scientist will tell you what we actually control and understand is very little, or at best a sweeping oversimplification of this complex world.
- h0l0cube 2y ago> has hardly been running the show any more than a bear eating a salmon out of a river thus far Exactly. We're on an super-linear growth curve. Looking at the earth on a timescale since biological life emerged, it would seem that intelligent squishy life appeared for a split second and then an entirely artificial intelligent life took over from then on.
- 2y ago
- GistNoesis 2y agoSo I've this code, it's called ShoggothDb, it's less than a megabyte of definitions. The principle is easy, it's fully deterministic. Code as Data, Data as Code. When you start the program, it joins the swarm : it starts by grabbing a torrent, and train a model on it in a distributed fashion, and publish the results as a torrent. Then with the trained model, it generates new data, (think of it like alpha-go playing new games to collect more data). See it as a tower of knowledge building itself, following some rough initial plans. Of course, at anytime you can fork the tower, and continue building with different plans, provided that you can convince other people from the swarm to contribute to the new tower rather than the old. Everything is immutable, but there is a versioning protocol built-in that allow the swarm to coordinate and automatically jumps to a next fork when the byzantine resistant quorum it follows vote for doing so (which allow your swarm to be compliant of the law and remove data if it was flagged as inappropriate). This allow some form of external control, but you can also let the quorum vote on subsequent modifications based on a model built on its data (aka free-running mode). It's using torrent because easier to bootstrap but because the whole computation deterministic, the underlying protocol is just files on disks and any way of sharing them is valid. So you can grab a piece to work on via http, or ftp, or carrier pigeon for all I care. As long as the digital signatures are conforming to the rules, brick by brick the tower will get built. To contribute, you can either help with file distribution by sharing the torrent, so it's as safe as your p2p client. If you want to commit some computing resources, like your gpu to building some of the tower, it's only requiring you to trust that there is no bug in ShoggothDb, because the computation you'll perform are composed of safe blocks, by construction they are safe for your computer to run. (Except if you want to run unsafe blocks, at this point no guarantee can be made). The incentives for helping building the tower can be set in the initial definition file, and range from mere access to the built tower to tokens for honest participation for the more materialistically inclined. Is it OK to release with the new law ? Is this comment OK, because ShoggothDB5-o can built its source from the specs in this comment ?
- dgellow 2y agoThere is no new law
- alkonaut 2y agoThe immediate danger of large AI models isn't that they'll turn the earth to paperclips it's that we'll create fraud as a service and have a society where nothing can be trusted. I'd be all for a law (however clumsy) that made image, audio or video content produced by models with over X parameters to be marked with metadata saying it's AI generated. Creating models that don't tag their output as such would be banned. So far nothing strange about the law. The obvious problem with the law is that you need to require even screenshotting an image AI and reposting it online without the made-with-ai metadata to be outlawed. And that would be an absolute mess to enforce, at least for images. But most importantly: whatever we do in this space has to be made on the assumption that we can't really influence what "bad actors" do. Yes being responsible means leaving money on the table. So money has to be left on the table, for - erm - less responsible nations to pick up. That's just a fact.
- worldsayshi 2y agoAny law that tries to categorize non-trustworthy content seems doomed to fail. We need to find better ways to communicate trustworthiness, not the other way around. (And I'm not sure adding more laws can help here.)
- alkonaut 2y agoNo I don't think technical means will work fully either. But the thing about these regulations is that you can basically cover the 99% case by just thinking about the 5 largest players in the field, be it regulation for social media, AI or whatever. It doesn't matter that the law has loopholes or that some players aren't affected at all. Regulation that helps somewhat in a large majority of cases is massive.
- dangitman 2y ago[dead]
- arder 2y agoI think the most acheivable way of having some verification of AI images is simply for the AI generators to store finger prints of every image they generate. That way if you ever want to know you can go back to Meta or whoever and say "Hey, here's this image, do you think it came from you". There's already technology for that sort of thing in the world (content ID from youtube, CSAM detection etc.). It's obviously not perfect, but could help and doesn't have the enormous side effects of trying to lock down all image generation.
- dandanua 2y ago"By focusing only on the most expensive and large-scale models, SB 1047 establishes a regulatory framework that could give the public a false sense of security about controlling this fast-moving technology. Smaller, specialized models may emerge as equally or even more dangerous than the models targeted by SB 1047 - at the potential expense of curtailing the very innovation that fuels advancement in favor of the public good." The amount of idiots who can't read and cheer the veto as a win against "the regulatory capture" is astounding.
- OJFord 2y ago> gov.ca.gov Ah, I think now I know why Canada's government website is canada.ca (which I remember thinking was a bit odd or more like a tourism site when looking a while ago, vs. say gov.uk or gov.au).
- whalesalad 2y agounfortunately the us owns the entire gov tld
- OJFord 2y agoYes but other countries (off the top of my head: UK, Aus, India) use gov.[ccTLD] My point was that that's confusing with gov.ca if the US is using ca.gov and gov.ca.gov for California, and that perhaps that's why Canada does not do that.
- skywhopper 2y agoSad. The real threat of AI is not that it will become an unstoppable superintelligence without appropriate regulation (if we reach that point, which we are nowhere close to, and probably not even on the right track) the superintelligence, by definition, will be able to evade any regulation or control we attempt. Rather, the threat of AI is that we will dedicate so many resources—money, power, human effort—to chasing the ludicrous fantasies of professional snake-oil salesmen, while ignoring the need to address actual problems with real, known solutions that are easily within each given a fraction of the resources currently being consumed by the dumpster-fire pit of “AI”. Unfortunately the Governor of California is a huge part of the problem here, misdirecting scarce state resources into sure-to-fail “public partnerships” with VC-funded scams, forcing public servants to add one more set of time-wasting nonsense to the pile of bullshit they have to navigate around just to do their actual job.
- tim333 2y agoI'm not sure AI risks are well enough understood to have good regulations for. With most risky industries you can actually quantify the risk a bit. Regarding: > we cannot afford to wait for a major catastrophe to occur before taking action to protect the public Maybe but you can wait for minor problems or big near misses before legislating it all up.
- amai 2y agoWhat are the differences to EU AI Act?
- rizky05 2y ago[dead]
- malwrar 2y agoThis veto document is shockingly lucid, I'm quite impressed with it despite my belief that regulation as a strategy for managing critical risks of AI is misguided. tl;dr gavin newsom thinks that a signable bill needs "safety protocols, proactive guardrails, and severe consequences" based on some general framework guided by "empirical trajectory analysis", and also is mindful of the promise/threat/gravity of all the machine learning occurring in CA specifically. He also affirms a general appetite for CA to take on a leadership role wrt regulating AI. My general read is that he wants to preserve public attention on the need for AI regulation and not squander it on SB 1047 specifically. Or who knows I'm not a politician lol. Really strong document tho, Interesting segment: > By focusing only on the most expensive and large-scale models, SB 1047 establishes a regulatory framework that could give the public a false sense of security about controlling this fast-moving technology. Smaller, specialized models may emerge as equally or even more dangerous than the models targeted by SB 1047 - at the potential expense of curtailing the very innovation that fuels advancement in favor of the public good. > Adaptability is critical as we race to regulate a technology still in its infancy. This will require a delicate balance. While well-intentioned, SB 1047 does not take into account whether an Al 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. I do not believe this is the best approach to protecting the public from real threats posed by the technology. This is an incisive critique of the fundamental initial goal of SB 1047. Based on the fact that the bill explicitly seeks to cover models whose training cost was >=$100m & expensive fine-tunes, my initial guess about this bill was that it was designed by someone software engineering-minded scared of e.g. open-weight releases a la facebook/mistral/etc teaching someone how to build a nuke or something. LLMs probably replaced the ubiquitous robot lady pictures you see in every AI-focused article as public enemy number one, and the bill feels focused on some of the technical specifics of this advent and its widespread use. This focus blinds the bill from addressing the general danger of machine learning however, which naturally confounds regulation for precisely the reason plain-spoken in the above four sentences. Incredible technical communication here.
- londons_explore 2y agoWhile I agree with this decision, I don't want any governance decisions to be made by one bloke. Why do we have such a system? Why isn't it a vote of many governors? Preferably a secret vote so voters can't be forced to vote along party lines...
- fuckyah 2y ago[dead]
- raluk 2y ago> California will not abandon its responsibility.
- karaterobot 2y ago> Safety protocols must be adopted. Proactive guardrails should be implemented, and severe consequences for bad actors must be clear and enforceable. Here, here. But this vague, passive voiced, hand-wavey statement that isn't even a promise does not exactly inspire me with a ton of confidence. Considering he turned this bill down to protect business interests, I wonder what acceptable legislation would look like, from his perspective. Looking forward to hearing about about it very soon, and I'm confident it'll be specific, actionable, responsible, and effective.
- xixixao 2y agoI find the statement quite well measured. He’s not giving a solution, that’s not easy, but is specifically calling out evidence-based measures. The statement calls out both the need to regulate, and the need to innovate. The issue is not black and white and neither is the statement.
- lostdog 2y agoWell, you already can't nuke someone. You can't make and release a biological weapon. It's probably illegal to turn the whole world into paperclips. There are already laws against doing harm to others. Sure, we need to fill some gaps (like preventing harmful deep fakes), but most things are pretty illegal already.
- notepad0x90 2y agoGonna swim against the current on this one. This is why we can't have nice things, too many tech people support Newsom on vetoing this. The nightmare of corporate surveillance and erosion of privacy we have to endure every day is a result of such sentiment and short sighted attempt at self-preservation. "It's vague" yeah, that's the point, the industry is allowed leeway to come up with standards of what is and isn't safe. They can establish a neutral committee to continually assess the boundaries of what is and isn't safe, as technology evolves. Do you expect legislators to define specifics and keep themselves updated with the latest happening in tech? Would it be better if the government established departments that police AI usage? This was the sweetest deal the industry could have gotten.
- humansareok1 2y agoThe dismal level of discourse about this bill shows that Humanity is utterly ill equipped to deal with the problems AI poses for our society.
- fuckyah 2y ago[dead]
- diggan 2y agoFor very interested readers, here is a meta-collection of articles from left, center and right about the story: https://ground.news/article/newsom-vetoes-bill-for-stricter-ai-regulations_a8c41b https://ground.news/article/newsom-vetoes-bill-for-stricter-... And a short bias comparison: > The left discusses Newsom's veto as a victory for Silicon Valley, concentrating on the economic implications and backing from tech giants. > The center highlights the broader societal ramifications, addressing criticisms from various sectors, such as Hollywood and AI safety advocates. > The right emphasizes Newsom's concerns about hindering innovation and his commitment to future collaborative regulatory efforts, showcasing a balanced approach.
- pc86 2y agoGround.News (no affiliation) is great for anyone interested in getting actual news and comparing biases. I particularly like that if you have an account they will show you news stories you're missing based on your typical reading patterns. I do wish the partisan categorization was a bit more nuanced/intentional. It basically boils down to: - Major national news outlet? Left. - Local affiliate of major national news outlet? Center. - Blog you've never heard of? Right. There are certainly exceptions but that heuristic will be right 90% of the time.
- diggan 2y agoIt is truly great, and cheap too (30 USD/year or something). Not affiliated either, just a happy user. Yeah, it could be a bit better. As a non-American, the biases are also very off from how left/center/right looks in my own country, but at least it tries to cover different angles which I tried to do manually before. They can also be a bit slow at linking different stories together, sometimes it takes multiple days for same headlines to be merged into one story.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- bcrosby95 2y agoIt's funny that it has Fox news as center to me. I watched them back when Obama was president a couple times and some of the shows would play Nazi videos while talking about him. Nevermind birtherism. I haven't watched them in over a decade, but I assume they haven't gotten any better.
- tr3ntg 2y agoThis is a little annoying. He vetoes the bill, agrees with the intention, paints the "solution" as improper, suggests there is some other solution that is better, doesn't entirely describe that solution with any detail, and encourages future legislation that is "more right." I'm exhausted already. I can't think of a less efficient way to go about this.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- hot_gril 2y agoThe "this bill doesn't go far enough" thing is normally what politicians say when they don't want it to go in that direction at all. Anyway, I'm glad he vetoed.
- blueyes 2y agoRemember when one of the bill's co-sponsors announced that he was co-founding an AI regulation company called Gray Swan? https://www.piratewires.com/p/sb-1047-dan-hendrycks-conflict-of-interest https://www.piratewires.com/p/sb-1047-dan-hendrycks-conflict... This bill was tainted from day 1, and Wiener was bamboozled into pushing it.
- bradhilton 2y agoI'm glad he vetoed the bill, but his rationale is worrisome. Even if he's just trying to placate SB 1047 proponents, they will try to exact concessions from him in future sessions. I'll take this brief reprieve, but it's still a large concern for me.
- RIMR 2y agoWhat specifically do you find worrisome about his rationale? It mostly seems like he's asking for evidence-based policy that views AI as a potential risk regardless of the funding or size of the model, because this doesn't actually correlate with any actual evidence of risk. I can't tell what direction your disagreement goes. Are you worried that he still feels that AI needs to be regulated at all, or do you think that AI needs to be regulated regardless of empirical evidence of harm?
- karlzt 2y agoHere is the text of the PDF: "OFFICE OF THE GOVERNOR SEP 29 2024 To the Members of the California State Senate: I am returning Senate Bill 1047 without my signature. This bill would require developers of large artificial intelligence (Al) models, and those providing the computing power to train such models, to put certain safeguards and policies in place to prevent catastrophic harm . The bill would also establish the Board of Frontier Models - a state entity - to oversee the development of these models. California is home to 32 of the world's 50 leading Al companies , pioneers in one of the most significant technological advances in modern history. We lead in this space because of our research and education institutions, our diverse and motivated workforce, and our free-spirited cultivation of intellectual freedom. As stewards and innovators of the future, I take seriously the responsibility to regulate this industry. This year, the Legislature sent me several thoughtful proposals to regulate Al companies in response to current, rapidly evolving risks - including threats to our democratic process, the spread of misinformation and deepfakes, risks to online privacy, threats to critical infrastructure, and disruptions in the workforce. These bills, and actions by my Administration, are guided by principles of accountability, fairness , and transparency of Al systems and deployment of Al technology in California. SB 1047 magnified the conversation about threats that could emerge from the deployment of Al. Key to the debate is whether the threshold for regulation should be based on the cost and number of computations needed to develop an Al model, or whether we should evaluate the system's actual risks regardless of these factors. This global discussion is occurring as the capabilities of Al continue to scale at an impressive pace. At the same time, the strategies and solutions for addressing the risk of catastrophic harm are rapidly evolving. By focusing only on the most expensive and large-scale models, SB 1047 establishes a regulatory framework that could give the public a false sense of security about controlling this fast-moving technology. Smaller, specialized models may emerge as equally or even more dangerous than the models targeted by SB 1047 - at the potential expense of curtailing the very innovation that fuels advancement in favor of the public good. Adaptability is critical as we race to regulate a technology still in its infancy. This will require a delicate balance. While well-intentioned, SB 1047 does not take into account whether an Al 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. I do not believe this is the best approach to protecting the public from real threats posed by the technology. Let me be clear - I agree with the author - we cannot afford to wait for a major catastrophe to occur before taking action to protect the public. California will not abandon its responsibility. Safety protocols must be adopted. Proactive guardrails should be implemented, and severe consequences for bad actors must be clear and enforceable. I do not agree, however, that to keep the public safe, we must settle for a solution that is not informed by an empirical trajectory analysis of Al systems and capabilities. Ultimately, any framework for effectively regulating Al needs to keep pace with the technology itself. To those who say there's no problem here to solve, or that California does not have a role in regulating potential national security implications of this technology, I disagree. A California-only approach may well be warranted - especially absent federal action by Congress - but it must be based on empirical evidence and science. The U.S. Al Safety Institute, under the National Institute of Science and Technology, is developing guidance on national security risks, informed by evidence-based approaches, to guard against demonstrable risks to public safety. Under an Executive Order I issued in September 2023, agencies within my Administration are performing risk analyses of the potential threats and vulnerabilities to California's critical infrastructure using Al. These are just a few examples of the many endeavors underway, led by experts, to inform policymakers on Al risk management practices that are rooted in science and fact. And endeavors like these have led to the introduction of over a dozen bills regulating specific, known risks posed by AI, that I have signed in the last 30 days. I am committed to working with the Legislature, federal partners, technology experts, ethicists, and academia, to find the appropriate path forward, including legislation and regulation. Given the stakes - protecting against actual threats without unnecessarily thwarting the promise of this technology to advance the public good - we must get this right. For these reasons, I cannot sign this bill. Sincerely, Gavin Newsom.".
- curious_cat_163 2y agoFor those supporting this legislation: Would you like to share the specific harms to the public that this bill sought to address and prevent?
- drcode 2y agowe'll probably create artificial superintelligence in the next few years when that happens, it likely will not go well for humans the specific harm is "human extinction"
- curious_cat_163 2y agoThanks for sharing your thoughts. I have a somewhat more optimistic take: We will create some form of artificial intelligence (AI) in the next decade. However, the recent (i.e. over last five years) advances in natural language processing are not the ones that automatically lead to that. I think we need more fundamental breakthroughs than attention-based neural networks and all the tricks that have gone into say a Llama3. [1] Even if we did develop an AI more aggressively, say by 2030, I am not sure if that automatically leads to extinction. Here, my optimism is guided by the last few times we had major technological innovations (i.e. Steam Engine, Rise of the Semiconductor based circuits, etc.). To be sure, these technologies were disruptive, probably net-negative in terms of pure climate impact and led to near-term job losses and generally helped increase the power of people on the top of the capitalist food-chain. However, they also helped us accelerate into a world where we can produce more food than we need for feeding everybody on the planet in a given year. And generally, helped us see more of the world by connecting the planet both physically and virtually. I am not a blind optimist though. I think we need regulation for harm prevention. The problem with that approach is that we need to understand what harms are being caused first and in some instances that might be too late. But, I don't think we start by taking a blanket position (as a society/polity) on how technological innovation should occur -- because a) we are not there yet and b) that's just a poor way to do science. [1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2407.21783 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2407.21783
- lasermike026 2y agoThey misspelled AI with Al. This Al guy sounds very dangerous.
- creativenolo 2y agoI wish Hooli wouldn’t
- lvspiff 2y agoJust give us the Asimov three laws to start rather than these nebulous "open model" language crap. Those should be the basic premise for any regulations that go into a bill in this area (but I'm sure the military contractors would never go for that with the whole "no harm to humans" thing - they want their terminator).