California has a wide range of AI experience and is big enough to set global policy and standards going forward

In this federal legislative vacuum, states are emerging as today’s AI regulators. Some of the laws passed include measures to protect consumer data privacy (OR SB-619), build institutional understanding of AI (LA SCR49), prevent election interference (MI HB-5144), and establish state AI task forces (IL HB-3563), offices (CT SB-1103), and advisory councils (TX HB-2060). Recently, Utah passed a broader law (UT SB0149) establishing liability, notice of interaction requirements, and an Office of AI Policy. However, in this emerging patchwork, one state is uniquely positioned to have a crucial impact on AI governance: California. The promise of California as an AI regulator Perhaps California’s efforts to influence AI policy, particularly, for frontier systems, is due to its status as an AI powerhouse, its large economy, and its Democratic penchant for regulation. The Golden State is home to 32 of Forbes’ top 50 global AI companies and leading frontier players such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, xAI, Google, and Microsoft, among others. OpenAI kickstarted the generative AI race with its release of ChatGPT back in 2022, and its GPT-4 large-language model is still the top preference for AI users more than a year after its release. Anthropic is one of OpenAI’s major competitors; their recently released Claude 3 model outperforms GPT-4 on many standard performance benchmarks. Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, is a market behemoth that produces open models—those whose inner workings are released to the public for widespread inspection, modification, and execution—and it just introduced its long-awaited Llama 3 model. The presence of such major AI developers makes California an attractive jurisdiction for advancing responsible AI policy. Furthermore, California produces 14.5% of the United States GDP, and if it were a sovereign country, it would have the world’s fifth- or sixth-largest economy behind the U.S. (without California), China, Japan, Germany, and possibly India. California’s dual role as an AI hotspot and a powerful economy might enable their state AI regulation to accomplish many of the benefits of standard-setting legislation, such as requiring responsible development and deployment of frontier systems, mitigating theft of powerful dual-use models by malicious actors, and ensuring legal liability for AI harms. A newly introduced bill provides a model for such regulation and may garner many of these benefits for Californians and, incidentally, everyone else. In February 2024, State Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) introduced the Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models Act. The bill’s primary aim is to mitigate large potential risks posed by future frontier models, including the automation of large-scale cyberattacks and the production of novel biological weapons. It would address these risks by requiring the developers of a model trained using large amounts of computing power to demonstrate the safety of their system. If they were unable to make such a demonstration, they would be subject to additional requirements, including submitting yearly certifications of compliance with safety standards, implementing emergency shutdown protocols, and strengthening cybersecurity protections to prevent unauthorized access. The bill also includes several other key provisions to increase safety. It would require providers of computing clusters to verify the identity and goal of customers seeking large amounts of computing power for AI training. It would also mandate that developers report safety incidents, including hazardous use and model theft. The state attorney general would be empowered to prosecute AI-related damages and threats to public safety. Additionally, the bill would establish a subsidized public computing cluster to democratize access to expensive AI training—cutting-edge AI-specialized computer chips cost tens of thousands of dollars. To oversee all these requirements, the bill would create the Frontier Model Division within the Department of Technology. Through its ambitious and broad provisions, this bill, if passed, could capture the promise of AI concentration in California. Not only might California policies, like Senator Wiener’s, be able to achieve many of the benefits of national legislation, but passing such policies may also be easier in California than at the federal level. First, California’s government is overwhelmingly Democratic and therefore less subject to gridlock and polarization than is the case nationally. Governor Gavin Newsom is a Democrat and the state Assembly and Senate have wide Democratic margins. The absence of partisan-based gridlock makes it easier to pass laws and regulations in California than places with greater party competition. Second, California has a strong track record of passing groundbreaking technology regulation, such as an Internet of Things security law and the California Consumers Privacy Act (CCPA). These considerations may make it easier to advance AI policies in California than at the federal level.