Dear Governor Newsom,

We stand at a pivotal moment, and you are in the unique position to determine our future.

While artificial intelligence holds tremendous promise, it also poses the risk of significant harm. To be honest, few of us know exactly what the future of AI will bring, but one thing we know for sure: by the time we know the full scope of what’s possible, it will be too late.

As AI models become more and more powerful, we risk stumbling into the same kind of dangerous pattern as we did with the unregulated rise of social media. At the moment when people started to sound the alarm, we hesitated. We are confident that if we could go back and do it over, we would have acted. Please, we cannot make the same mistakes with AI.

And that’s why we call on you to act, and to sign SB 1047 into law.

SB 1047 is a light touch, common sense approach that asks the right questions about risk of harm at the right time – before a model is released into the world. SB 1047 simply requires  basic safety testing for the most powerful AI models, and expects developers to take reasonable precautions if those tests reveal significant risk of harm. These expectations are strikingly similar to voluntary commitments that major AI companies have already made – the big difference is that now they would be held accountable. In addition, SB 1047 protects whistleblowers who speak out about AI risks – a critical need given how AI companies have attempted to silence employees, leading one to speculate: what are they hiding? Finally, SB 1047 invests in public infrastructure by establishing CalCompute, a publicly owned and operated computing cluster to expand access to this resource intensive part of AI technology. This expands access to AI resources for academic researchers and start-ups.

While major players in the tech industry have come out strong against this bill, the truth is that they’re quite out of touch. The public overwhelmingly supports this proposal. Recent polling shows 77% of California voters – across party lines – back SB 1047 (and even more after they hear details about the bill). Parents and young people are especially concerned about potential AI harms without proper oversight.

Big Tech has successfully blocked any meaningful regulation of its behavior with a classic playbook of “not here, not now, not like this.” But we are not fooled, and neither should you be.

California has been at the forefront of critical issues before because you have been willing to be a national leader. From marriage equality to gun control, from data privacy to the climate crisis, you have forged a bold course and then watched as the rest of the country caught up. This is again one of those moments.  

Governor Newsom, will you lead on one of the most pressing issues of our time? Please sign SB 1047 - we are counting on you.