Senator Nancy Pelosi issued a statement last night expressing her opposition to SB 1047, a bill enacted in California to regulate artificial intelligence.
“The view of many of us in Congress is that SB 1047 is well-intentioned but ill-informed,” Pelosi said. She added that other Bay Area lawmakers, Zoe Lofgren, Anna Eshu and Ro Khanna, have raised concerns about the bill, which she described as “more harmful than helpful.”
The bill, recently amended to address concerns from critics including AI company Anthropic, is now before the California Assembly for a vote. Because it is a state bill, Pelosi and other members of the Assembly have no official say. But Pelosi’s seniority and profile are likely to give her voice to California politicians.
“AI starts in California,” she said. “We need to have laws that are a model for the nation and the world. We have an opportunity and a responsibility to ensure that small businesses and academia, not big corporations, lead.”
State Sen. Scott Winner, who sponsored the bill, issued a statement in response, saying he had “tremendous respect” for Pelosi but “respectfully and strongly disagreed with her statement.”
“This bill requires: only “The largest AI developers are now taking on the task of doing what they have repeatedly promised: performing basic safety tests on their super-powerful AI models,” Wiener added.
