Press Release

Senator Wiener Responds to Top Experts’ Final Report on AI Governance Framework

SACRAMENTO – The Joint California Policy Working Group on AI Frontier Models released its final report presenting a framework for the governance of AI models in California. The Working Group was convened by Governor Gavin Newsom when he announced his veto of Senator Scott Wiener’s SB 1047. Senator Wiener issued the following statement in response to the interim report’s release:

“This report affirms what our brightest AI minds have clearly stated: That while AI presents massive opportunities to deliver a future of abundance and broad-based prosperity, the immense power of these models requires policymakers to act with haste to establish effective safety guardrails. I appreciate the hard work and thought that the members of the Joint California Policy Working Group on AI Frontier Models have put into this report. 

“These findings come at an urgent moment for the future of AI in California and around the world. Many companies are openly advocating for the federal government to wash away state protections against deepfake revenge porn, algorithmic bias in healthcare decisions, and intellectual property theft — commonsense protections we can all agree upon. These efforts have drawn bipartisan criticism from elected leaders in all 50 states because the need for basic safeguards is obvious to anyone paying attention to the rapid pace of improvement in AI capabilities.

“California still has a vital role to play in establishing safeguards for AI—we can set the standard that others will follow. The recommendations in this report strike a thoughtful balance between the need for safeguards and the need to support innovation. My office is considering which recommendations to incorporate into SB 53, and I invite all relevant stakeholders to engage with us productively in that process.”

Background

The Working Group was convened by Governor Newsom at the end of the last legislative session to assemble evidence and recommendations from our state’s foremost AI researchers and policy minds to help California lawmakers develop workable guardrails for deploying advanced AI systems. The Working Group consists of:

  • Dr. Fei-Fei Li, Co-Director, Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence
  • Dr. Jennifer Tour Chayes, Dean of the College of Computing, Data Science, and Society at UC Berkeley
  • Tino Cuéllar, President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace 

 

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