SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Developments this week on the state and national level aim to protect against risks of artificial intelligence (AI) while spurring innovation.
Some say AI has potential for great good, including advancements in healthcare and transportation. It also has the potential for great harm, such as misinformation and cyber attacks.
The U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo announced Thursday the creation of the U.S. AI Safety Institute Consortium, bringing together more than 200 companies and organizations to create best practices for “the development and deployment of safe and trustworthy artificial intelligence.”
Members include Alphabet’s Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook’s parent company Meta, Apple and OpenAI — the creator of ChatGPT.
Here in Sacramento, state lawmakers are taking up AI as well.
“California is at the heart of AI innovation and we want to keep it that way,” said Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco).
He introduced Senate Bill 1047 Wednesday. If passed as currently written, it would task the California Department of Technology with creating a public cloud computing cluster called CalCompute.
“There are already some great, what we call, compute clusters, because AI development requires a lot of computing power and it can be very expensive,” said Wiener. “There are cloud compute clusters that really focus on research and academics, which is great, but we want to create a cluster that can be accessible for entrepreneurs, for startups, and make it really low-cost or free for them to be able to innovate.”
This would give powerful cloud-computing access to people who might not otherwise be able to afford that access, he said.
“It’ll increase access for small companies, startups, entrepreneurs, people who are just trying to innovate… because that can lead to the next great discovery,” said Wiener.
One of Wiener’s co-sponsors on the legislation is an organization called Economic Security California.
“Our mission is to build an economy where everyone has the freedom and stability to thrive,” said director Teri Olle.
CalCompute would put the power of AI innovation into more hands, she said.
“The vast majority of computing power in the large models are all being run and decided by for-profit commercial companies,” she said. “That corporate concentration really drives what we're seeing in the world, in terms of innovation and research. CalCompute would be a publicly owned-and-operated cloud computing cluster that would keep a space for research, innovation and development of cutting-edge AI technology in the public interest and that is there for the public good.”
But as Wiener noted, cloud computing and data storage are expensive.
Susan Shelley with the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association worries about the cost of what SB 1047 is proposing, especially as the state is facing a budget deficit.
“It could certainly become one more budget item that every year is more expensive than they thought it was. Another bullet train in the sky kind of thing,” said Shelley.
She points out the California Department of Technology has been on the State Auditor’s High-Risk list for years, “for its inability to secure information and for its lack of oversight on technology projects throughout the California government.”
“To create CalCompute, that just sounds breathtakingly ambitious and very dangerous if the information was not secure,” said Shelley.
ABC10 took these concerns to Wiener.
“There are times when agencies are not perfect and there are times when mistakes are made. But, if we're able to get this passed, we're going to make sure that it's implemented well,” said Wiener. “There will be a lot of people involved in helping make sure that it's a success.”
Because the bill was just proposed, it does not yet have an exact price-tag attached to it. However, Wiener says he believes the cost will be worth the investment.
“There's a long history in technology of public investments that lead to huge societal benefits and private benefits,” he said. “Public investment was a critical start to the internet as we know it. It started with the Department of Defense, and that changed the world.”
SB 1047 would also create some guardrails for AI, requiring developers of large AI models to pressure test those models before rolling them out to the public. The law would require companies to develop and follow extensive safety protocols.
Shelley of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association wonders why this is something California needs to take up.
Wiener said while he’s pleased to see the Biden Administration create the consortium for AI safety, he believes there need to be laws on the books. He sees a better chance of those passing at the state level than in our divided Congress right now.
