OpenAI opposes a California bill that would impose new safety requirements on artificial intelligence (AI) companies, arguing that the bill will restrict innovation and that the issue should be addressed at the federal level.
OpenAI said in a letter to the state senators who drafted the bill that the bill, Senate Bill 1047, would also impact U.S. AI competitiveness and national security. The company shared the letter in an email to PYMNTS.
“The AI revolution is just beginning, and California's unique position as a global leader in AI powers the vitality of our state's economy,” OpenAI chief strategy officer Jason Kwon said in a letter to California Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco). “SB 1047 would threaten that growth, slow the pace of innovation, and lead California's world-class engineers and entrepreneurs to leave the state in search of greater opportunities.”
In a press release issued Wednesday in response to OpenAI's opposition to SB 1047, Wiener said the company's letter was not criticizing “any provision of the bill,” but rather arguing that the issue should be left to the U.S. Congress.
“As I have stated many times, I agree that ideally Congress should address this,” Wiener wrote in the letter, “but Congress has not done so, and I am skeptical that Congress will ever do so.”
Wiener, in his response to other concerns raised by OpenAI in the letter, said the bill's requirements would strengthen national security by forcing AI companies to thoroughly test their products, and that it wouldn't make sense for companies to leave California if the bill passed because the bill would still apply to them and would apply to all companies doing business in the state.
“In short, SB 1047 is a very reasonable bill that would require large AI labs to do what they've already committed to doing: testing large-scale models for catastrophic safety risks,” Wiener wrote.
The AI bill is currently under consideration in the state legislature, but it has undergone significant revisions and intense debate within the tech industry, PYMNTS reported on Monday.
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