State Intervention
However, individual states are looking to put legal AI frameworks in place. In California, one such bill was blocked in September by Governor Gavin Newsom but it hasn’t been taken off the table completely.
There is momentum for AI safety bills, including from within the industry itself – notably from OpenAi rival and AI wunderkind Anthropic. In fact, a letter was sent to Newsom urging him to lead on AI regulation and the signatories included employees of OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Anthropic, Meta, and xAI.
Instead, the OpenAi leadership is urging the Government to bypass States legislators and let Ai ventures just communicate directly with that the US AI Safety Institute. Chris Lehane, OpenAI’s vice president of global affairs, said in an interview: “Part of the incentive for doing that ought to be that you don’t have to go through the state stuff, which is not going to be anywhere near as good as what the federal level would be.”
This is not going to sit well with the senators currently working on bills, as it essentially take their power away. However, as the Chinese AI companies push their wares – and innovate at speed – the desire to beat them might drive Trump to consider OpenAI’s proposal whatever the implications.
