California governor vetoes AI safety bill [Video]

California Governor Gavin Newsom has vetoed a bill aimed at regulating powerful artificial intelligence models following pushback from tech giants and critics who argued the law went too far.

The bill had faced a barrage of critics, including members of US Congress from Newsom’s Democratic party, who argued that threats of punitive measures against developers in a nascent field would throttle innovation.

In a statement on Sunday, Newsom acknowledged that SB-1047 was “well-intentioned” but expressed concern that the bill was too “stringent” and unfairly focused on “the most expensive and large-scale models.”

“The bill applies stringent standards to even the most basic functions — so long as a large system deploys it,” the governor noted.

He added, “smaller, specialized models may emerge as equally or even more dangerous than the models targeted by SB 1047 — at the potential expense of curtailing the very innovation that fuels advancement in favor …