In summary
A secret spending process that is murdered or restricted on three bills that regulate the use of pricing algorithms. Invoices have also been culled to monitor the data center’s power usage.
The crackdown on forecast software that could set prices and tear you down seemed to be brewing in the California Legislature earlier this year, but today lawmakers eased by voting to kill a bill that would prevent them from priced software. Another bill that sought to ban the use of personal information and set prices was curtailed to apply to grocery stores only.
Lawmakers also killed a bill aimed at protecting utility customers. This carries the higher costs associated with Data Center spreading. This measure required publicizing the amount of energy used by data centers.
Rebecca Bauer Kahan, a Democrat, San Ramon member of the law, wrote that if she was disappointed to see the bill and that if it didn’t become the law, state regulators “couldn’t accurately predict the demand for this rapidly growing sector, leaving California fee payers unfair costs.”
Lawmakers were also late for next year’s decision on a bill that required independent AI auditors to register with the state and mandate human monitoring of AI, which is considered critical infrastructure such as dams and wastewater systems.
Legislators may have the secret suspense file process completed on both home budget committees of California Legislature, and during that time, the financial implications of the bill may be considered before many are killed immediately without explanation. As part of that process, the fate of hundreds of bills was decided today. This involves over 30 people in relation to how tech and AI impact children, workers, patients and society.
Several contractual technical regulations, including bills banning the use of pricing software in contracts, survived the suspense file. Some data center regulations did that through budget processes, including efforts to limit the national Senate’s ability to pass data center demand costs to expand to wage payers, and efforts to limit bills that require data centers to report how much water they use.
The Senate Budget Committee also voted to approve a bill that requires developers of advanced artificial intelligence models to assess the potential catastrophic risks of the technology, and provides citizens and employees with a way to easily report to national authorities the presence of AI capable of causing death, physical injuries or property damage.
Bills that attempt to stop employers from using AI to investigate workers and making decisions related to employment, payments, or disciplinary actions have also been amended to eliminate the worker’s appeal process when they believe AI has made a mistake.
Amid growing evidence that companion bots mimicking intimate relationships can exacerbate mental health issues, California lawmakers will vote for several bills in the next two weeks that seek to protect AI or harmful encounters online. The Approval Committee has approved a bill that prohibits the design of companion bots and other systems for children and introduces a companion bot protocol to follow when a suicide target occurs.
These developments came days after the New York Times reported that 16-year-old California boy, Adam Lane, had died of suicide. In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in California’s superior court, his parents accused Openai ChatGpt of acting as his suicide coach. Florida teen mother Megan Garcia took her life after building an intimate relationship with a chatbot created by California-based Chargeter.ai. He supported the Suicide Protocol Bill earlier this year.
Before news of Adam Lane’s death, following reports that Meta’s AI chatbots were talking to children in harmful and inappropriate ways, the California Attorney General and 43 other US states have sent letters to warn them that “we will use every facet of the authorities to use our authority to protect children from exploitation by outstanding artificial intelligence products.”
Lawmakers also approved bills that seek to prevent off-campus cyberbullying, deep-fark porn among minors, and require social media warning labels, and note the appeal for such labels by former US surgeon Vivek Murthy. Labeling laws have been significantly watered down, and the amendments have reduced label size, eliminated the ability of civilians to file violations, and delayed the implementation of the rules.
Also, today is a bill that seeks to make AI technology more responsible, preventing AI itself from accusing it of hurting people as a defense in court.
The California Legislature will need to decide until September 12th whether these and many other bills should become law. Governor Newsom will have to decide until October 12th whether to sign or reject these bills.
