Author: Tom Mitchelhill, CoinTelegraph; Translated by: Tao Zhu, Golden Finance

California Governor Gavin Newsom has vetoed a controversial artificial intelligence (AI) bill, arguing that it would hinder innovation and fail to protect the public from “real” threats posed by the technology.

On September 30, Newsom vetoed SB 1047, the Frontier Artificial Intelligence Model Safety Innovation Act, which had been strongly opposed by Silicon Valley.

The bill proposes mandatory safety testing of AI models and other guardrails that tech companies worry would stifle innovation.

Newsom said in a Sept. 29 statement that the bill focuses too much on regulating existing top AI companies and fails to protect the public from “real” threats posed by new technologies.

"Instead, the bill imposes strict standards on even the most basic functionality — as long as large systems deploy it. I don't think this is the best way to protect the public from the very real threats posed by technology."

SB 1047, authored by Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, also requires California developers — including big names like ChatGPT maker OpenAI, Meta and Google — to implement “kill switches” for their AI models and publish plans to mitigate extreme risks.

If the bill is enacted, AI developers could also be sued by state attorneys general in cases where there is an ongoing threat from models such as an AI grid takeover.

Newsom said he had asked the world’s leading AI safety experts to help California “develop actionable guardrails,” with a focus on creating “science-based trajectory analysis.” He added that he had ordered state agencies to expand their assessments of the risks of catastrophic events that could arise from AI developments.

Although Newsom vetoed SB 1047, he said adequate safety protocols must be in place for AI, adding that regulators cannot “wait until a major disaster occurs to take action to protect the public.”

Newsom added that his administration has signed more than 18 bills on AI regulation in the past 30 days.

Politicians and Big Tech Oppose AI Safety Bill

Before Newsom's decision, the bill was unpopular among lawmakers, advisers and big tech companies.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and companies like OpenAI say this would severely hamper the development of artificial intelligence.

Neil Chilson, head of AI policy at the Abundance Institute, warned that while the bill focuses on models of a certain cost and scale (those costing more than $100 million), its scope could easily be expanded to hit smaller developers.

But some are open to the bill. Billionaire Elon Musk, who is developing his own artificial intelligence model called Grok, is one of a handful of tech leaders who support the bill and AI regulation more broadly.

In an August 26 post to X, Musk said that "California should pass SB 1047, the AI ​​safety bill," but he acknowledged that supporting the bill was a "tough decision."