ChatGPT maker OpenAI shares concerns about California AI safety bill in letter to senator

OpenAI joined a list of companies that have written letters to California’s State Senator Scott Wiener expressing concern about the AI safety bill.

The act known as the Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models Act, also dubbed SB 1047, was introduced by Wiener to establish standards in the development of AI models.

The letter on Wednesday (Aug, 21) was written by the chief strategy officer at OpenAI Jason Kwon who shared their worries:

“A federally-driven set of AI policies, rather than a patchwork of state laws, will foster innovation and position the U.S. to lead the development of global standards. As a result, we join other AI labs, developers, experts and members of California’s Congressional delegation in respectfully opposing SB 1047 and welcome the opportunity to outline some of our key concerns.”

OpenAI’s competitor Anthropic has also issued a notice of concern, as have several politicians like Nancy Pelosi and Zoe Lofgren.

In his letter, Kwon says that national security matters should be regulated at the federal level and suggests a clear federal framework of AI regulations could help the US maintain its competitive advantage against countries like China.

He also writes: “We share concerns about the bill’s potential impact on California’s ability to help the US maintain our current global technological lead.”

Senator Wiener responds to OpenAI opposition to act

On Wednesday evening, the senator responded via a public press release on his government website.

“What’s notable about the OpenAI letter is that it doesn’t criticize a single provision of the bill.

“I’m extremely appreciative that OpenAI appears to acknowledge that the bill’s specific core provisions — performing a safety evaluation for foreseeable risks on massively powerful AI models before releasing them and having the ability to shut down a massively powerful model that’s in your possession — are reasonable and implementable. Indeed, OpenAI has repeatedly committed to perform these safety evaluations.”

The senator has gone on to address the issues stated by Kwon and even says he has stated repeatedly that he agrees that “ideally Congress would handle this.

“However, Congress has not done so, and we are skeptical Congress will do so. Under OpenAI’s argument about Congress, California never would have passed its data privacy law, and given Congress’s lack of action, Californians would have no protection whatsoever for their data.”

After running through several points, Wiener then shares quotes from national security experts who support SB 1047 and he describes the act as being “well calibrated to what we know about foreseeable AI risks, and it deserves to be enacted.”

Featured Image: By Brandon Starr on Flickr

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