Fei-Fei Li's Group Urges Preemptive AI Safety Legislation

# sb 1047

A new report from a California policy group, co-led by AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li, suggests that lawmakers should take into account AI risks that haven't yet been seen in the real world when creating AI regulatory policies. This 41-page interim report, released on Tuesday, comes from the Joint California Policy Working Group on AI Frontier Models, set up by Governor Gavin Newsom after he vetoed California's controversial AI safety bill, SB 1047. Newsom felt that SB 1047 didn't quite hit the mark, but he recognized the need for a deeper look into AI risks to guide legislators. In the report, Li, along with co-authors Jennifer Chayes, dean of UC Berkeley's College of Computing, and Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, push for laws that would make it clearer what frontier AI labs like OpenAI are up to. Before the report went public, it was looked over by industry folks from all walks of life, including strong AI safety supporters like Turing Award winner Yoshua Bengio and those who opposed SB 1047, like Databricks co-founder Ion Stoica. The report points out that the new risks from AI systems might mean we need laws that make AI model developers share their safety tests, how they get their data, and their security steps with the public. It also calls for better standards for third-party checks on these things and company policies, plus more protections for AI company workers and contractors who blow the whistle. Li and her co-authors mention that there's not enough proof yet about AI's potential to help with cyberattacks, make biological weapons, or cause other "extreme" dangers. But they also say that AI policy shouldn't just deal with what's happening now; it should also think about what could happen in the future if we don't have enough safety measures in place. The report uses the example of a nuclear weapon, saying, "We don't need to see a nuclear weapon go off to know it could cause a lot of harm." It goes on to say, "If those who talk about the worst risks are right — and we're not sure if they will be — then not doing anything about frontier AI right now could be really costly." To make AI model development more open, the report suggests a "trust but verify" approach. It says AI model developers and their workers should have ways to report on things that matter to the public, like internal safety tests, and also have to get their testing claims checked by third parties. While the report, which will be finalized in June 2025, doesn't back any specific laws, it's been well received by experts on both sides of the AI policy debate. Dean Ball, an AI-focused research fellow at George Mason University who didn't like SB 1047, said on X that the report is a good move for California's AI safety rules. It's also a win for AI safety advocates, according to California state senator Scott Wiener, who introduced SB 1047 last year. Wiener said in a press release that the report adds to the "urgent talks about AI governance we started in the legislature in 2024." The report seems to agree with parts of SB 1047 and Wiener's next bill, SB 53, like making AI model developers report their safety test results. Looking at the bigger picture, it looks like a much-needed win for AI safety folks, whose ideas have been losing ground over the past year.

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