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FILE PHOTO: California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) reacts as he speaks to the members of the press on the day of the first presidential debate hosted by CNN in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S., June 27, 2024.
Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoes California’s AI safety bill
California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Sunday vetoed the Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models Act, or SB 1047, the AI safety bill passed by the state’s legislature in August.
Newsom has signed other AI-related bills into law, such as two recent measures protecting performers from AI deepfakes of their likenesses, but vetoed this one over concerns about the focus of the would-be law.
“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,” Newsom wrote in a letter on Sept. 29. “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.”
Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener, who sponsored the bill, called the veto a “setback for everyone who believes in oversight of massive corporations that are making critical decisions that affect the safety and welfare of the public and the future of the planet.” Wiener hasn’t disclosed the next steps but vowed to continue pushing the envelope on AI regulation in the state. “California will continue to lead in that conversation — we are not going anywhere.”Visitors check out Alibaba Cloud's data synthesis and Embodied engine at the 2024 Apsara Conference in Hangzhou, China, on September 19, 2024.
Hard Numbers: Alibaba’s models, Palantir’s contract, Newsom’s deadline, Vietnam’s fab plan
100: Alibaba, the Chinese tech giant, launched more than 100 new open-source AI models, collectively known as Qwen 2.5. Many of the models have specific design purposes, such as for automobiles or science research. Alibaba’s models are free to use, but the company sells its cloud services and support to fellow businesses.
100 million: Palantir has won a $100 million US defense contract to give military personnel advanced visualizations of battlefields in real time across different computers. The company will use intelligence data and computer vision technology to make digital replicas of battlefields for real-time decision making.
6: California Gov. Gavin Newsom has six days left to sign SB 1047, the California AI safety bill. He hasn’t signaled whether he’s going to sign it yet, but he recently signed a pair of bills into law that protect performers from artificial intelligence recreations being made without their permission. However, he has said that he’s concerned about the “chilling effect” the bill could have on the state’s tech industry.
1: Vietnam said it’s aiming to build one semiconductor fabrication plant and 10 packaging plants in the country by 2030. To help, it’ll launch a fund to help foreign investors with taxes on the projects. The country is seeking to evolve from a manufacturing economy to include more high-tech industries such as chip making.A Cal Fire firefighter keeps watch while the Bridge Fire burns in the mountain communities to the northeast of Los Angeles, near the Mountain High ski resort in Wrightwood, California, U.S. September 11, 2024.
Fires pose challenge to insurers, insured
A heat wave has got California scrambling to control three separate wildfires, one of which injured 13 people this week, a short-term crisis but part of a long-term challenge for homeowners and those who insure them.
In the Western United States, insurers are flat out refusing to insure some homes, and there is pressure on homeowners to take steps — like removing shrubs near their homes and widening driveways — to reduce the fire risk. The situation is not as dramatic for Canadian insurers, but the cost to the industry of wildfires is rising north of the border.
The insurance industry is not the only one dealing with the fallout from increased risks from climate-associated natural events. The Canadian tourism industry is coping with an “image problem” related to wildfires. Not only is it deprived of visitors in areas, like Jasper, when a fire is nearby, but places far from the fires are also suffering.
In spite of the rising economic problems posed by climate change, the issue seems to remain a lesser one in the minds of voters, judging from the messages of politicians. During Tuesday’s presidential debate, for example, Donald Trump did not acknowledge the threat, and Kamala Harris failed to make concrete commitments.
Trump has been skeptical of climate change, dismissing it as a hoax, while Harris supports public investments in the clean energy transition.
It appears to be anything but a ballot issue in the United States, likely because cost-of-living issues are top of mind, and the partisan division around the issue is so stark that it would not help Harris with the swing-state voters she needs.
The Feds vs. California: Inside the twin efforts to regulate AI in the US
Silicon Valley is home to the world’s most influential artificial intelligence companies. But there’s currently a split approach between the Golden State and Washington, DC, over how to regulate this emerging technology.
The federal approach is relatively hands-off. After Joe Biden’s administration persuaded leading AI companies to sign a voluntary pledge in July 2023 to mitigate risks posed by AI, it issued a sweeping executive order on artificial intelligence in October 2023. That order commanded federal agencies and departments to begin writing rules and explore how they can incorporate AI to improve their current work. The administration also signed onto the UK’s Bletchley Declaration, a multi-country commitment to develop and deploy AI in a way that’s “human-centric, trustworthy, and responsible.” In April, the White House clarified that under the executive order, agencies have until December to “assess, test, and monitor” the impact of AI on their work, mitigate algorithmic discrimination, and provide transparency into how they’re using AI.
But perhaps its biggest win came on Aug. 29 when OpenAI and Anthropic voluntarily agreed to share their new models with the government so officials can safety-test them before they’re released to the public. The models will be shared with the US AI Safety Institute, housed under the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST.
“We are happy to have reached an agreement with the US AI Safety Institute for pre-release testing of our future models,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altmanwrote on X. “For many reasons, we think it’s important that this happens at the national level. US needs to continue to lead!”
Altman’s clarification that regulation should happen at the national level implied an additional rebuke of how California seeks to regulate the company and its tech.
Brian Albrecht, the chief economist at the International Center for Law & Economics, was not surprised by the companies’ willingness to share their models with the government. “This is a very standard response to expected regulation,” Albrecht said. “And it’s always tough to know how voluntary any of this is.”
But Dean Ball, a research fellow at the libertarian think tank Mercatus Center, said he’s concerned about the opacity of these arrangements. “We do not know what level of access the federal government is being given, whether the federal government has the ability to request that model releases be delayed, and many other specific details,” Ball said. “This is not the way lawmaking is supposed to work in America; having private arrangements worked out between providers of transformative technology and the federal government is a troubling step in AI policy.”
Still, these appear to be relatively light-touch measures that counter California’s proposed approach to regulating artificial intelligence.
On Aug. 28, the state’s legislature passed the Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models Act, or SB 1047, which aims to establish “common sense safety standards” for powerful AI models. Written by California State Sen. Scott Wiener, and supported by AI pioneers like Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, the bill has divided Silicon Valley companies. Albrecht said that what’s been proposed by California is much closer to the European model of AI regulation — the EU’s AI Act passed in March — while Washington hasn’t yet adopted a unified view on how the technology should be regulated.
Critics of the bill include OpenAI, California’s Chamber of Commerce, and even former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. “While we want California to lead in AI in a way that protects consumers, data, intellectual property, and more, SB 1047 is more harmful than helpful in that pursuit,” Pelosi said in a recent statement. In a recent edition of GZERO AI, experts from the Electronic Frontier Foundation at the Atlantic Council expressed concerns about the bill’s so-called “kill switch” and how it could stifle open-source AI development.
Some industry players have been more open to the bill. Anthropic said the bill’s benefits likely outweigh its risks and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who has an AI startup of his own called xAI, said California should “probably” pass the bill.
It’s still unclear whether Gov. Gavin Newsom will sign the bill — he has until Sept. 30 to do so. He has not signaled his view on the legislation, but in May, he warned about the risk of overregulating AI.
“I don’t want to cede this space to other states or other countries,” Newsom said at an event in San Francisco. “If we overregulate, if we overindulge, if we chase the shiny object, we could put ourselves in a perilous position.”
An image of a woman holding a cell phone in front of a Perplexity AI logo displayed on a computer screen.
Hard Numbers: Search wars, Lumen lights up, Anduril gets a raise, Public-private partnership
500: Lumen Technologies is watching its stock surge thanks to AI. The US telecom company revealed its fiber optics infrastructure is in demand by data centers needed for the AI boom. The company’s stock jumped 500% in the past month, when it was hovering around $1 per share.
14 billion: Palmer Luckey’s defense tech company, Anduril, just raised $1.5 billion in a new funding round, valuing the company at $14 billion. Luckey, best known as the founder of Oculus VR, which he sold to Meta in 2014, started Anduril in 2017 to make drones and other autonomous aircraft, and it is seen as one of the major AI companies challenging the legacy defense contractors.
100,000: The state of California has struck a partnership with Nvidia to train 100,000 students in AI-related skills. The initiative focuses on community colleges and will feature new curriculums, certifications, workshops, and labs to get students ready for careers in AI — including those with the state government.A boat with a French flag sails by on the Seine river in Paris, where concerns about the water quality have forced the cancellation of triathlon swim training session for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, on Monday 29 July 2024 in Paris, France.
Hard Numbers: Traversing the Seine, Heroics amid wildfires, Kim’s ‘miraculous’ rescue, Harris reenergizes Dem campaign, Dance class tragedy
18 million: As questions arise over the River Seine’s cleanliness and its impact on the Olympics, the river remains important for other reasons. In 2023,18 million tons of goods were carried on the river, but that’s less than one-third the amount that traveled on it before World War II.
1.5: In California, wildfires have burned an area larger than the size of Los Angeles – and the blazes are only 12% contained, according to local officials. But there is some positive news: A first responder ran1.5 miles through an area ravaged by wildfires to rescue two dogs and their litter of puppies. There are pictures!
5,000: He saved puppies?? “Hold my beer,” says North Korea’s Supreme Leader. DPRK state media reports thatKim Jong Un has “personally guided” the “miraculous” military rescue of 5,000 people trapped by flood waters following torrential rains over the weekend. That guy really is amazing.
81: A couple of new polls suggest that soon-to-be Democratic nominee Kamala Harris has erased the enthusiasm advantage that GOP nominee Donald Trump held over President Joe Biden. The Wall Street Journal reports that just 37% of Dems were excited to vote for Biden while 81% say the same for Harris this week. (Trump is at 85% of GOP voters.) An ABC Ipsos poll finds that 88% of Dems are enthusiastic about Harris vs. 82% of Republicans who are enthusiastic about voting for Trump.
2: The seaside town of Southport, UK, is in mourning today following Monday's deadly stabbing attack at a children’s Taylor Swift-themed dance class. Two youngsters were killed and another six children and two adults are in critical condition following the knife attack. Police have arrested a 17-year-old male who lived in a nearby village and are investigating the motive but have ruled out terrorism.
A satellite image shows smoke rising from the Park Fire in Chico, California, U.S., July 26, 2024.
Hard Numbers: California burns, Countries push for cease-fire, Meloni makes nice, Japan basks in Olympic glory
350,000: The Park fire in northern California has burned through over 350,000 acres of land — an area larger than New York City — and was just 10% contained as of Sunday. Authorities said the fire was spreading at a rate of 5,000 acres per hour, and police arrested a man who they suspect of having deliberately set the blaze in an act of arson.
3: On Friday, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada jointly called for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza and for Israel to respond “substantively” to a July 19 ruling from the International Court of Justice about the illegality of Israeli settlements and military occupation in the West Bank. The statement came a day after US Vice President Kamala Harris urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reach a Gaza deal.
3: Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Melonisigned a three-year deal with China while visiting Beijing on Saturday. She also promised to implement earlier bilateral agreements derailed by shifting geopolitics and to try new forms of cooperation. Meloni won praise from the US for officially pulling out of China’s Belt and Road Initiative last year, but with a possible Sino-European trade war looming – aggravated by China dumping its production overcapacity on world markets – she seems to be more conciliatory these days.
7: As of Sunday afternoon, Japan was leading the Olympic medal count with 7 podium finishes, including two golds in Judo. The lesson here is clear: Don’t wrestle with Japanese athletes. There will be more Judo finals on Monday, with a total of 19 gold medals to be awarded in finals across events in artistic gymnastics, swimming, shooting, diving, equestrian, mountain biking, skateboarding, archery, fencing, and canoe slalom (yep, that last one threw us too – here’s a primer).FILE PHOTO: A Palestinian man cries next to bodies of her family members who died following Israeli strikes earlier, during their funeral in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip.
Hard Numbers: Gaza death toll’s bleak milestone, UK inflation’s two-year low, California’s holiday rains, Pro-peace candidate’s race against Putin, US-Venezuela prisoner swap
20,000: Over 20,0000 Palestinians have been killed since war broke out between Israel and Hamas in early October, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health. The death toll in the enclave has risen at a historic rate amid Israeli airstrikes, and both Israel and Hamas face allegations of war crimes.
3.9: UK inflation cooled to 3.9% in November – down from October’s 4.6% – to its lowest rate in over two years. Economists say the surprising fall in consumer price inflation could lead the Bank of England to slash interest rates in the first half of 2024, far earlier than expected.
20 million: El Niño is gifting Californians just what they want for the holidays: intense rainfall and possible flooding and mudslides. A flood watch was in place for over 20 million people in California on Wednesday, and the National Weather Service said heavy rainfall is expected across the southern part of the Golden State through Friday, warning of a “significant flash flood risk.”
300,000: Russian Yekaterina Duntsova, a former TV journalist who’s called for peace in Ukraine, on Wednesday submitted documents to formally register for the 2024 presidential election against Vladimir Putin. Duntsova faces a few obstacles: She needs 300,000 signatures in support of her candidacy from at least 40 regions, and, well … a fair democratic process.
10: The US and Venezuela swapped prisoners on Wednesday. The South American country released 10 imprisoned Americans and extradited an ex-military contractor referred to as “Fat Leonard” – who was the heart of a major US Navy corruption scandal – in exchange for Alex Saab, a close ally of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.