A proposed California AI bill could have exposed open-source developers

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 36:59

   Yeah, so the really draconian one was, the one that we really fought hard was the one in California, which was called SB 1047. And it was basically, it was modeled basically after the, it was called the EU AI Act. So the European Union's AI Act. And this is the backdrop to all the U.S. stuff, which is the EU passed this bill called the AI Act. I don't know, whatever, two years ago. And it basically has killed AI development.

2. 37:18

   But it's actually killed AI development in Europe to a large extent. And then it's so draconian that even big American companies like Apple and Meta are not launching leading-edge AI capabilities in their products in Europe. Like, that's how, like, draconian that bill was. And it's sort of a classic... It's a classic kind of European thing where they, like, you know, like, they just thought that, you know, they have this kind of view that it's just like, well, you know, if we can't be the leader...

3. 37:43

   They literally say this, by the way. If we can't be the leader in innovation, at least you can be the leaders in regulation. And then they pass this like incredibly, you know, kind of ruinous self-harm, you know, kind of thing. And then, you know, a few years pass and they're like, oh my God, what have we done? And so they're, you know, they're kind of going through their own version of that. By the way, you know, I, you know, when I talk about Europe, I tend to be very dark about the whole thing.

4. 38:04

   I will tell you the darkest people I know about Europe are the European entrepreneurs who moved to the US are just like absolutely furious about what's happening in Europe on this stuff. But even there, like, it's so bad in Europe, like, they shot themselves in the foot so badly that there's actually a process now at the EU to try to unwind that. They're trying to unwind the GDPR. So, anyway, for people tracking Europe, Mario Draghi is the former, I guess, prime minister of Italy, did this thing about a year ago called the Draghi Report, which is the report on European competitiveness.

5. 38:33

   And he kind of outlined kind of in great detail all the ways that Europe was holding itself back, and part of it was over-regulation areas like AI. So they're trying to reverse out of that or making gestures, you know, we'll see what happens. In the middle of all that, California sort of inexplicably decided to basically copycat the EU AI Act and try to apply it to California, which might strike you as completely insane, to which I would say, yes, welcome to California.

6. 38:58

   And, you know, it was basically this, like, Sacramento political dynamic that kind of got crazy. It would have, you know, completely killed, you know, AI development in California. Fortunately, our governor vetoed it at the last minute. It did pass both houses, the legislature that he vetoed at the last minute. Jen, to your point, it would have done a whole bunch of things that were ruinously bad.

7. 39:20

   But one of the things it would have done is it would have assigned downstream liability to open source developers. And so, you know, we talked about, you know, the Chinese open source thing. Okay, so you got Chinese out there with open source. Now you're going to have American companies that have open source AI. And by the way, you're also going to have American academics and just like independent people in their nights and weekends developing open source.

8. 39:39

   you know, which is a key way that all this technology proliferates. And so this law would have assigned downstream liability to any misuse of open source to the original developer of the open source. And so, you know, you're an independent developer or you're an academic or you're a startup, you develop and release an AI model. The AI model works fine. The day you release it, it's great. But like five years later, it gets built into a nuclear power plant and then there's a meltdown of the nuclear power plant.

9. 40:01

   And then somebody says, oh, it's the fault of the AI. The legal liability for the nuclear meltdown or for anything, any other practical real world thing that would follow in the out years would then be assigned back to that open source developer. Of course, this is completely insane. completely kill open source. It would completely kill startups doing open source. It would completely kill academic research, like, in its entirety, you know, anything in the field.

10. 40:24

    And so, you know, like, that's the level of playing with fire, you know, kind of that these state-level politicians have become enamored with. Like I said, I think the good news is the feds understand this. I suspect that this is going to get resolved, but it does need to get resolved because, you know, just as a country, it just doesn't make any sense to let the states kind of operate suicidally like this.

11. 40:42

    And so that's what we're doing. You know, we talk about this. We call this our little tech agenda.