News Summary

• In 2024, Silicon Valley mounted a fierce campaign against California state senator Scott Wiener’s controversial AI safety bill, SB 1047.
• Governor Gavin Newsom ultimately vetoed the bill, echoing similar concerns, and a popular AI hacker house promptly threw an “SB 1047 Veto Party.” One attendee told me, “Thank god, AI is still legal”Now Wiener has returned with a new AI safetyBill, SB 53, which sits on Governor Newsom's desk awaiting his signature or veto sometime in the next few weeks.
• The bill requires leading AI labs — specifically those making more than $500 million in revenue — to publish safety reports for their most capable AI models.
• SB 53 also creates protected channels for employees working at AI labs to report safety concerns to government officials, and establishes a state-operated cloud computing cluster, CalCompute, to provide AI research resources beyond the Big Tech companies.