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Senator Wiener's Groundbreaking AI Bill Advances to Assembly Floor with Amendments
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This official press release documents the amended version of California's SB 1047 as it advanced toward a final Assembly vote in August 2024, capturing the legislative compromises made in response to industry feedback on a high-profile AI safety regulation effort.
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Summary
California's SB 1047, a landmark AI safety bill requiring safety standards for large-scale AI developers, advanced to the Assembly floor in August 2024 with significant amendments. Key changes include removing criminal penalties, eliminating a proposed Frontier Model Division regulatory body, softening legal standards from 'reasonable assurance' to 'reasonable care,' and establishing a $10 million fine-tuning cost threshold to exempt startups. The bill represents a major state-level attempt to regulate frontier AI development amid federal inaction.
Key Points
- •Criminal perjury penalties replaced with civil penalties; enforcement routed through the Attorney General's office rather than a new Frontier Model Division.
- •Legal standard softened from 'reasonable assurance' to 'reasonable care,' with NIST standards as a reference benchmark for compliance.
- •Startups fine-tuning open-source models below $10 million cost threshold are exempt from coverage requirements.
- •Pre-harm enforcement narrowed: AG can only seek civil penalties if harm has occurred or there is an imminent threat to public safety.
- •Bill positions California as a regulatory leader on AI given congressional gridlock, drawing support from Anthropic and other industry stakeholders.
Cited by 1 page
| Page | Type | Quality |
|---|---|---|
| Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models Act | Policy | 66.0 |
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Press Release
# Senator Wiener’s Groundbreaking Artificial Intelligence Bill Advances To The Assembly Floor With Amendments Responding To Industry Engagement
August 15, 2024
**SACRAMENTO** – The Assembly Appropriations Committee passed Senator Scott Wiener’s (D-San Francisco) Senate Bill 1047 with significant amendments introduced by the author. SB 1047 is legislation to ensure the safe development of large-scale artificial intelligence systems by establishing clear, predictable, common-sense safety standards for developers of the largest and most powerful AI systems. The bill will now advance to the Assembly floor. It will be eligible for a vote on August 20th and must pass by August 31st.
“The Assembly will vote on a strong AI safety measure that has been revised in response to feedback from AI leaders in industry, academia, and the public sector,” said **Senator Wiener**. “We can advance both innovation and safety; the two are not mutually exclusive. While the amendments do not reflect 100% of the changes requested by Anthropic—a world leader on both innovation and safety—we accepted a number of very reasonable amendments proposed, and I believe we’ve addressed the core concerns expressed by Anthropic and many others in the industry. These amendments build on significant changes to SB 1047 I made previously to accommodate the unique needs of the open source community, which is an important source of innovation.
“With Congress gridlocked over AI regulation—aside from banning Tik Tok, Congress has passed no major technology regulation since computers used floppy disks—California must act to get ahead of the foreseeable risks presented by rapidly advancing AI while also fostering innovation.”
The major amendments to SB 1047, which will be published by the Senate in the coming days, are:
- **Removing perjury** – Replace criminal penalties for perjury with civil penalties. There are now no criminal penalties in the bill. Opponents had misrepresented this provision, and a civil penalty serves well as a deterrent against lying to the government.
- **Eliminating the FMD** – Remove the proposed new state regulatory body (formerly the Frontier Model Division, or FMD). SB 1047’s enforcement was always done through the AG’s office, and this amendment streamlines the regulatory structure without significantly impacting the ability to hold bad actors accountable. Some of the FMD’s functions have been moved to the existing Government Operations Agency.
- **Adjusting legal standards** \- The legal standard under which developers must attest they have fulfilled their commitments under the bill has changed from “reasonable assurance” standard to a standard of “reasonable care,” which is defined under centuries of common law as the care a reasonable person would have taken. We lay out a few e
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