The California Capitol will likely see a flurry of attempts to regulate artificial intelligence next year, with two Bay Area lawmakers emerging as leaders on the issue.
Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, D-Orinda, will play a key role in shaping any major AI legislation in her new role as chair of the Assembly Privacy and Consumer Protection Committee. She says she’s focused on crafting bills tailored to address specific “known harms” from the technology, such as discrimination and bias in algorithms and maintaining the privacy of medical records as doctors embrace AI in their practices.
She said she expects that all major AI legislation will come before her committee and that successful bills will need to show what specific problems they aim to address. She said legislation should be tailored so that it doesn’t stifle innovation in the field or push smaller companies out of the industry.
“For any bills that come before the committee ... we will be asking that basic fundamental question, ‘What are the harms you’re trying to solve?’” she said. “We’re going to want to see concrete harms, and we’re going to want to see feasible solutions.”
In that spirit, she said, she plans to reintroduce her bill to ban companies from using AI-powered algorithms that discriminate against people next year. The bill would have required companies that develop those algorithms to assess them and document their intended uses, limitations and potential discriminatory risks. It was shelved in the Assembly Appropriations Committee in May, but Bauer-Kahan says the new version will be “more streamlined and allow for better compliance.”
Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, has introduced legislation that takes a broader approach. His bill, SB294, is currently light on details but wide in scope and aims to set industry-wide safety and transparency standards.
Wiener has not yet finalized the text of his bill but announced it in September as an effort to “enact sweeping safety rules governing AI development” and characterized it as “among the first attempts at broad regulation of AI.” The legislation is aimed at a number of potential risks posed by AI, including its potential to be used to create biological weapons, target critical infrastructure and spread disinformation.
“To be clear, I’m not an AI skeptic,” Wiener told the Chronicle. “AI has huge potential benefits for humanity. And we need to foster those benefits while we assess and then mitigate risks.”
Despite his bill’s scope, he said, it doesn’t address all potential AI regulation, and he expects to see a “significant” number of other AI bills introduced.
Chandler Morse, vice president of corporate affairs for the finance and HR software company Workday, said he’s never seen such a dramatic increase in an area of policy as he has in AI in recent months. Workday is among the companies working to shape AI regulation at the state, national and international levels. Morse pointed to recent efforts in Washington, Connecticut, Maryland and New York to enact AI regulation, but also said he thinks California is the furthest along because of Bauer-Kahan’s plan to reintroduce her algorithm bias bill.
"If we can successfully land a workable bill in California, I think it will help as other states start to think about how to do this,” he said.
Workday and other companies seeking to shape the regulations that will govern the AI industry have also been pushing for the federal government to enact a uniform policy for the country. President Joe Biden signed an executive order in October that requires companies building advanced AI models to test their safety and directs federal agencies to monitor their use of AI for risks. But gridlocked Congress has not passed major regulation of the technology.
In addition to Wiener and Bauer-Kahan’s bills, Assemblymember Ash Kalra, D-San Jose, has introduced a measure to limit the ability of movie studios and other entertainment companies to use AI-generated versions of human performers in productions. Jonathan Mehta Stein, who leads the voting rights advocacy organization California Common Cause, said the group plans to propose several bills aimed at regulating the use of AI to influence elections early next year.
Bauer-Kahan said she sees part of her role as assessing existing laws — such as those banning child pornography, protecting intellectual property and prohibiting discrimination — and ensuring that they will apply to artificial intelligence.
“What we also need to do is not necessarily come up with new laws, but make sure that the laws we have on the books are protective of the situation where your actor has changed from human actors to an artificial intelligence tool,” she said. “How do we make sure that our laws continue to protect the people we’ve been protecting?”
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