Senator Wiener’s Statement on Pushback to AI Bill

SACRAMENTO – Senator Wiener (D-San Francisco) issued the following statement:

“The hyperbole around SB 1047 notwithstanding, the bill is a focused approach designed to evaluate whether the largest new AI models create a risk of catastrophic harm. The bill only applies to huge models costing over $100 million to train. It doesn’t cover startups. It doesn’t ban open sourcing. It only authorizes the Attorney General to initiate enforcement proceedings and only in limited and extreme circumstances. It doesn’t require licensing or any form of permission from the government to train or release a model. The bill *does* require a safety evaluation for the largest models — evaluations that the large labs have already committed to performing — and common-sense safeguards to reduce the risk of catastrophic harm.

“I’m grateful that over the past few months, a wide array of stakeholders — both critics and fans — have engaged with us to make SB 1047 as good as it can be. We’ve met with and received high quality constructive feedback from startup founders, large companies, academics, frontline technologists, open-source advocates, and others. In response to that feedback, we’ve made a series of amendments to the bill. My goal is to get this right, and we’re working very hard to do so. We’ll continue to engage with diverse stakeholders, and I continue to welcome constructive feedback.

“We also need to have eyes wide open that some in the tech sector are opposed to any and all forms of AI regulation, no matter how limited or narrow. No version of this or any other AI regulatory bill will satisfy them. While I respect that perspective — we live in a democracy, and I welcome diverse views different from my own — I do take issue with the significant misinformation being spread about the bill, including the false and absurd claim that model developers will go to prison for releasing a model that causes harm. That is simply not true. I’m no stranger to hardball politics, but it’s important to stick to the actual facts about the bill.”

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