Governor Newsom sits down with AI leaders to discuss state regulation

As artificial intelligence continues to proliferate, California is still not sure how to regulate it. A new study commissioned by Governor Newsom calls for more transparency and guardrails, but stops short of endorsing specific regulatory legislation. The governor convened a special working group of leaders in the AI field, after he vetoed new regulations last year, and that group’s report could have a lot of influence at the state Capitol, where there are dozens of bills in the pipeline that could change how California regulates and controls AI and protects us from its potential harms and abuses. The report calls for greater transparency into the development of new AI models and for outside testing of them with independent parties, and it suggests that the state consider whistleblower protections and potentially require that the government be informed about AI that could pose dangers to society. But it didn’t specifically call for those measures to be enacted. For more, KCBS Political Reporter Doug Sovern sat down with Jonathan Mehta Stein, Chair of CITED, the California Initiative for Technology and Democracy, which is an offshoot of California Common Cause.