That’s according to an executive order signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday. The order followed a dispute between Anthropic and the Defense Department over contract clauses barring the military from using Anthropic systems for domestic mass surveillance and fully autonomous weaponry. 

By designating Anthropic a supply chain risk, the Department of Defense effectively barred the startup from competing for certain military contracts and subcontracts. A judge recently issued a temporary injunction to block the designation.

The broader purpose of Newsom’s order was to place guardrails on the use of AI by state employees while at the same time encouraging them to accelerate their use of the technology. 

Many of the largest AI companies in the world are based in California, and the state also leads the nation in volume of AI regulations.

The order requires state agencies to: 

• Develop recommendations for state contract standards relating to AI and its ability to generate child sexual abuse material, violate civil liberties and civil rights laws or infringe upon legal “protections against unlawful discrimination, detention, and surveillance.” Help employees gain access to “vetted GenAI tools.”
• Update the State Digital Strategy to identify ways generative AI can “strengthen government transparency and accountability, improve performance, and make government services easily accessible for every Californian.”
• Develop generative AI for Californians to gain access to government services.
• Issue guidance on how state employees should place watermarks on AI-generated imagery and videos.

Those mandates come at a time when more than 20 California departments and agencies are working to develop or use Poppy, a generative AI assistant for state employees, and when half a dozen state agencies are testing AI to do things like assist state employees and help homeless people and businesses. They also come as state courts and city governments are increasing their use of the technology.

Newsom’s office said President Donald Trump and Republicans in Washington D.C. have rolled back protections or ignored the ways AI can harm people. 

“Unlike the Trump administration, California remains committed to ensuring that AI solutions adopted and deployed by [California]… cannot be misused by bad actors,” the governor’s office said in a press release announcing the order.

At the federal level, Trump has signed executive orders to discourage states from regulating AI and urged federal agencies to adopt AI to do things like reduce federal regulation and accelerate decisions made about Medicare. The White House introduced an AI policy framework last month that the president wants Congress to take up. That proposal takes a light touch approach to regulation and does not address issues related to bias, discrimination, or civil rights.

This is the second executive order signed by Newsom to address artificial intelligence. A 2023 order aimed exclusively at generative AI, the sort that powers systems like ChatGPT and Midjourney, similarly called for more use of AI by state agencies and ordered them to put guardrails in place.

Newsom’s handling of AI issues is closely watched by both union leaders, who in February pledged that they will not support his run for president without more worker protections from the technology, and big tech donors, who are pouring money into influencing California politics ahead of midterm elections this fall.

The post Newsom orders government to consider AI harm in contract rules appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday aimed at blocking states from crafting their own regulations for artificial intelligence, saying the burgeoning industry is at risk of being stifled by a patchwork of onerous rules while in a battle with Chinese competitors for supremacy.

Members of Congress from both parties, as well as civil liberties and consumer rights groups, have pushed for more regulations on AI, saying there is not enough oversight for the powerful technology.

But Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that “there’s only going to be one winner” as nations race to dominate artificial intelligence, and China’s central government gives its companies a single place to go for government approvals.

“We have the big investment coming, but if they had to get 50 different approvals from 50 different states, you can forget it because it’s impossible to do,” Trump said.

The executive order directs the Attorney General to create a new task force to challenge state laws, and directs the Commerce Department to draw up a list of problematic regulations.

It also threatens to restrict funding from a broadband deployment program and other grant programs to states with AI laws.

David Sacks, a venture capitalist with extensive AI investments who is leading Trump’s policies on cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence, said the Trump administration would only push back on “the most onerous examples of state regulation” but would not oppose “kid safety” measures.

What states have proposed

Four states — Colorado, California, Utah and Texas — have passed laws that set some rules for AI across the private sector, according to the International Association of Privacy Professionals.

Those laws include limiting the collection of certain personal information and requiring more transparency from companies.

The laws are in response to AI that already pervades everyday life. The technology helps make consequential decisions for Americans, including who gets a job interview, an apartment lease, a home loan and even certain medical care. But research has shown that it can make mistakes in those decisions, including by prioritizing a particular gender or race.

States’ more ambitious AI regulation proposals require private companies to provide transparency and assess the possible risks of discrimination from their AI programs.

Beyond those more sweeping rules, many states have regulated parts of AI: barring the use of deepfakes in elections and to create nonconsensual porn, for example, or putting rules in place around the government’s own use of AI.

The post Trump signs executive order to block state AI regulations appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The moratorium, bundled in to a sweeping budget reconciliation bill this week, also threatens 30 bills the California Legislature is currently considering to regulate artificial intelligence, including one that would require reporting when an insurance company uses AI to deny health care and another that would require the makers of AI to evaluate how the tech performs before it’s used to decide on jobs, health care, or housing.

The California Privacy Protection Agency sent a letter to Congress Monday that says the moratorium “could rob millions of Americans of rights they already enjoy” and threatens critical privacy protections approved by California voters in 2020, such as the right to opt out of business use of automated decisionmaking technology and transparency about how their personal information is used.

If passed, the law would stop legislative efforts in the works nationwide. Lawmakers from 45 states are or have considered nearly 600 draft bills to regulate artificial intelligence this year, according to the Transparency Coalition, a group that tracks AI policy efforts by state lawmakers and supports legislation to regulate the technology. California has passed more bills since 2016 to regulate AI than any other U.S. state, according to Stanford’s 2025 AI Index report.

The measure was introduced by Congressman Brett Guthrie, a Republican from Kentucky and chair of the House Energy and Commerce committee, who said it is necessary to resolve a patchwork of state regulation. On Wednesday, members of Congress in that House committee voted 30-24 along party lines to approve the budget bill that includes the moratorium. It will now advance to the House floor and potentially the Senate, where some observers say it faces an uphill battle against rules that limit policy changes in budget proposals.

As written, the moratorium would lift after 10 years. But it would have plenty of impact in the meantime, said Ben Winters, an attorney for the Consumer Federation of America. In California, he thinks the legislation could halt efforts by the Privacy Protection Agency to regulate automated decisionmaking, prevent enforcement of laws to protect voters from deepfakes and short circuit draft bills aimed at protecting people from discrimination and landlords who use AI to raise rent prices.

“If this bill were to pass, California couldn’t protect its citizens from exactly those harms,” he said.

Companies and lobbyists are attempting to use Washington D.C. to undermine California’s legislative AI leadership, said state Sen. Josh Becker, a Democrat from Menlo Park, in the heart of Silicon Valley. Becker has authored or coauthored a number of bills regulating AI, including one signed into law that requires AI makers provide tools to consumers so they know when generative AI is in use.

“This is an effort to tell people when something was created by AI, and so if this gets delayed for a year or two or 10 it’s going to have really negative consequences,” he said.

What’s unclear, he said, is exactly what regulation is covered by the moratorium. Would it, for example, wipe out privacy protections that Californians enjoy, and which were targeted by Congressional legislation last year? And how would it affect a bill Becker authored that gives people a way to quickly delete personal information collected by data brokers, set to go into effect next January?

“If they preempt that, it’s really negative for the country,” he said. “We’re [California] big enough that we can influence the country on our own, but if they preempt what we’re doing then it’s up to the federal government who has been unable to act on these issues.”

Momentum for AI harms — and, possibly, for curbs on regulation

For all the worry, the moratorium is very unlikely to pass if it reaches the U.S. Senate, said Gus Rossi, director of public policy and strategy at Omidyar Network, which funds public interest AI projects and tracks AI regulation. 

That’s because a federal regulation known as the Byrd rule requires that budget reconciliation bills be related to fiscal matters, and, in Rossi’s reading at least,  a 10-year moratorium on AI regulation doesn’t fit that definition. But Rossi still thinks people should take it seriously, arguing that it’s an attempt by House Republicans to establish a marker on what they think should be the approach to AI legislation, and a sign of things to come.

“The action is in the states, not D.C.,” he said. “That’s why some people in D.C. are trying to stop states… particularly California, who’s leading the pack.”

If this bill or a similar one in the future passes, Rossi expects it would get challenged in court and put a chilling effect on efforts to regulate AI by state lawmakers. It’s unclear whether it’s legal for the federal government to make a blanket moratorium on state regulation, said Winters, who worked in the U.S. Department of Justice during the Biden administration.

He agrees that the Byrd rule means the bill is unlikely to pass if it reaches the U.S. Senate, though Republicans may connect it to a $500 million plan to invest in AI for federal agencies and argue that it’s essential to limit state regulation in order to carry out certain budget provisions.

The House bill makes exceptions for states to continue enforcing some laws related to AI, such as laws that enable more use of AI or that are intended to improve government efficiency. It’s reasonable to interpret one of the exceptions to mean states like California could continue enforcing privacy law if this bill passed, said Amba Kak, codirector of The AI Now Institute, a research and equitable AI advocacy organization. But doing so is risky.

“We can’t count on the fact that courts will see it this way, especially in the context of an otherwise sweeping moratorium with the clear intention to clamp down on AI-related enforcement,” she said.

A House AI task force spent years discussing areas of bipartisan agreement and possible bills to pass to regulate AI, New York Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said in a hearing about the moratorium, but Congress was unable to pass any of that legislation. During that time, people committed suicide from their interactions with chatbots and kids and teens were harmed by falsely generated sexually exploitative deepfakes, and so states decided to act to do things like force AI chatbots to protect the private information of people seeking mental health care in Utah and require chatbots include a protocol for when someone expresses the desire to commit self harm in New York. 

“All of these protections are protections that Congress refuses to take up, refuses, and so states are taking up this responsibility,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “Let states protect people. A moratorium is a deeply dangerous idea at this moment.”

Congresswoman Doris Matsui, a Democrat from the Sacramento area,  echoed Ocasio-Cortez at the hearing, saying,  “We can’t shoot ourselves in the foot by stopping the good work states have done and will continue to do.” 

Supporters of the moratorium identify different sorts of harm if it doesn’t pass. A patchwork of state regulations of AI “is the fastest way to secure Chinese dominance of AI,” said Jay Obernolte, a Republican from California and co-chair of the House AI task force. He supports a moratorium, and if Congress fails to act, he said the people it will hurt most are entrepreneurs who can’t afford to follow regulatory regimes passed by different states.

“The most destructive thing is if there’s fear out there that every few years as the winds of political fortune shift, the rules governing the use of AI completely change,” he said during the hearing.

Broader pushback against AI regulation

The proposed moratorium is in line with efforts to prevent regulation of AI by President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance, who say such regulations will stifle innovation. A White House plan to promote growth of the AI industry and likely reduce regulation is due out by this summer. Companies like Amazon, Google, Meta, and big businesses who use AI  have lobbied in Sacramento and Washington D.C. to prevent regulation of the technology. 

Guthrie’s proposal comes a few days after Sen. Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, pushed for “light touch” AI regulation to ensure the United States maintains AI supremacy over other nations and to, in Cruz’s words, “prevent needless state over-regulation.”

The intent of Guthrie’s bill, Winters believes, is to send a signal to tech companies and open up the door to possible future legislation if the budget reconciliation bill fails to pass. It’s a trend consistent with Senator Cruz’s statement last week and efforts to remove red tape for data center projects on federal land.

“I’d describe this as… explicitly saying we are supporting the AI companies more than the American people,” he said. “We’re seeing an explicit turn toward a deregulatory state.”

Federal lawmakers have steadily increased the number of bills they propose related to AI in recent years, but they have passed relatively few of them into law, according to the AI Index report. Out of more 220 bills proposed last year, only four passed.

By contrast, state lawmakers passed more than 130 bills to regulate AI last year. California passed 22 bills last year, more than any other state, and attempted to harmonize its rules with the European Union’s AI Act and other U.S. states. The 2024 State of State Tech Policy report, from NYU’s Center for Social Media and Politics, found a 163% increase in tech policy proposals by state lawmakers last year compared to 2023. That trend is driven by one-party control in the vast majority of state houses across the country.

The adage that states are the laboratories of democracy is still true, said ​​Scott Brennen, a coauthor of the State of State Tech Policy report, so shutting down their ability to try out different approaches doesn’t seem like a good idea and could undercut the federal government’s ability to make better policy. Since AI is getting integrated into an ever-wider range of tools, Guthrie’s moratorium appears to apply widely, he added, including to social media platforms, ongoing efforts by states to protect children online, and data privacy protections that address automated decision making.

“I don’t necessarily think state regulation of AI is always the best course of action, there are definitely areas like consumer data protection where it would be better if the federal government took the lead, but the federal government isn’t taking the lead,” he said.

The post Californians would lose AI protections under bill advancing in Congress appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models Act (SB 1047) was seen by many as a necessary safeguard on the technology’s development. Generative AI covers systems that produce new content in text, video, images and music – often in response to questions, or “prompts”, by a user.

But Newsom said the bill risked “curtailing the very innovation that fuels advancement in favour of the public good”. While agreeing the public needs to be protected from threats posed by the technology, he argued that SB 1047 was not “the best approach”.

What happens in California is so important because it is the home of Silicon Valley. Of the world’s top 50 AI companies, 32 are currently headquartered within the state. California’s legislature therefore has a unique role in efforts to ensure the safety of AI-based technology.

But Newsom’s decision also reflects a deeper question: can innovation and safety truly coexist, or do we have to sacrifice one to advance the other?

California’s tech industry contributes billions of dollars to the state’s economy and generates thousands of jobs. Newsom, along with prominent tech investors such as Marc Andreessen, believes too many regulations could slow down AI’s growth. Andreessen praised the veto, saying it supports “economic growth and freedom” over excessive caution.

However, rapidly advancing AI technologies could bring serious risks, from spreading disinformation to enabling sophisticated cyberattacks that could harm society. One of the significant challenges is understanding just how powerful today’s AI systems have become.

Generative AI models, like OpenAI’s GPT-4, are capable of complex reasoning and can produce human-like text. AI can also create incredibly realistic fake images and videos, known as deepfakes, which have the potential to undermine trust in the media and disrupt elections. For example, deepfake videos of public figures could be used to spread disinformation, leading to confusion and mistrust.

AI-generated misinformation could also be used to manipulate financial markets or incite social unrest. The unsettling part is that no one knows exactly what’s coming next. These technologies open doors for innovation – but without proper regulation, AI tools could be misused in ways that are difficult to predict or control.

Traditional methods of testing and regulating software fall short when it comes to generative AI tools that can create artificial images or video. These systems evolve in ways that even their creators can’t fully anticipate, especially after being trained on vast amounts of data from interactions with millions of people, such as ChatGPT.

SB 1047 sought to address this concern by requiring companies to implement “kill switches” in their AI software that can deactivate the technology in the even of a problem. The law would also have required them to create detailed safety plans for any AI project with a budget over US$100 million (£77.2m).

Critics said the bill was too broad, meaning it could affect even lower-risk projects. But its main goal was to set up basic protections in an industry that’s arguably moving faster than lawmakers can keep up with.

California as a global leader

What California decides could affect the world. As a global tech leader, the state’s approach to regulating AI could set a standard for other countries, as it has done in the past. For example, California’s leadership in setting stringent vehicle emissions standards through the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), and its early regulation of self-driving cars, have influenced other states and countries to adopt similar measures.

But by vetoing SB 1047, California may have sent a message that it’s not ready to lead the way in AI regulation. This could leave room for other countries to step in – countries that may not care as much as the US about ethics and public safety.

Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, had cautiously supported the bill, acknowledging that while it was a “tough call”, it was probably a good idea. His stance shows that even tech insiders recognise the risks AI poses. This might be a sign the industry is ready to work with policymakers on how best to regulate this new breed of technology.

The notion that regulation automatically stifles innovation is misleading. Effective laws can create a framework that not only protects people, but allows AI to grow sustainably. For example, regulations can help ensure that AI systems are developed responsibly, with considerations for privacy, fairness and transparency. This can build public trust, which is essential for the widespread adoption of AI technologies.

The future of AI doesn’t have to be a choice between innovation and safety. By implementing reasonable safeguards, we can unlock the full potential of AI while keeping society safe. Public engagement is crucial in this process. People need to be informed about AI’s capabilities and risks to participate in shaping policies that reflect society’s values.

The stakes are high and AI is advancing rapidly. It’s time for proactive action to ensure we reap the benefits of AI without compromising our safety. But California’s killing of the AI bill also raises a wider question on the increasing power and influence of tech companies, given they raised objections that subsequently led to its veto.

The post California’s governor blocked landmark AI safety laws. Here’s why it’s such a key ruling for the future of AI worldwide appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.