As corporations increasingly weave artificial intelligence technologies into the daily lives of Americans, California lawmakers want to build public trust, fight algorithmic discrimination and outlaw deepfakes that involve elections or pornography.
California lawmakers said they cannot wait to act, citing hard lessons they learned from failing to reign in social media companies when they might have had a chance. But they also want to continue attracting AI companies to the state.Some companies, including hospitals, already use AI models to define decisions about hiring, housing and medical options for millions of Americans without much oversight. Up to 83% of employers are using AI to help in hiring, according to the U.S.
Inspired by the months-long Hollywood actors strike last year, a California lawmaker wants to protect workers from being replaced by their AI-generated clones — a major point of contention in contract negotiations. Real-world risks abound as generative AI creates new content such as text, audio and photos in response to prompts. So lawmakers are considering requiring guardrails around “extremely large” AI systems that have the potential to spit out instructions for creating disasters — such as building chemical weapons or assisting in cyberattacks — that could cause at least $500 million in damages. It would require such models to have a built-in “kill switch,” among other things.