California governor Gavin Newsom said Tuesday that there are 38 bills on his desk that create new laws around artificial intelligence, but one looms larger than all of them: SB 1047, California's bill that tries to prevent AI systems from causing catastrophes. For the first time, California's governor shared what he is thinking about the contentious bill.

In short, he thinks SB 1047 has problems. Newsom said he's interested in AI bills that can solve today's problems without upsetting California's booming AI industry. That's not very promising for the future of SB 1047, which would protect against disasters by holding big AI vendors liable if their products were used to cause grievous harm, like bringing down critical infrastructure. On the other hand, signing the bill will enrage huge sections of the AI industry who would want Newsom to veto the bill.

"We've been working over the last couple of years to come up with some rational regulation that supports risk-taking but not recklessness," said Newsom during a conversation with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff on Tuesday, onstage at the 2024 Dreamforce conference. "That's challenging now in this space, particularly with SB 1047, because of the sort of outsized impact that legislation could have, and the chilling effect, particularly in the open source community."

Newsom added that he had to be concerned about demonstrable risks versus hypothetical risks. He later observed, "I can't solve for everything. What can we solve for?"

The governor struck a major criticism of SB 1047: The bill attempts to stop AI from playing a role in mass casualty events and cybersecurity events costing more than $500 million but does little to hold tech companies accountable for anything less. Critics of SB 1047 say it might smother innovation but fails to regulate the very short-term problems AI is causing today.

Newsom made these comments to a full house attending an enterprise technology conference downtown San Francisco. At most tech conferences I've attended lately, you hear murmurations in line for the bathroom about SB 1047's many flaws. Newsom probably knew which kind of voters were in the audience and may have been playing to the crowd.

That's understandable, perhaps. after all, put your AI regulation where your mouth is the governor might. Earlier today Tuesday, Newsom signed five bills into law that address AI problems we've already seen play out in 2024, including AI-generated election misinformation and Hollywood studios creating AI clones of actors. These may be the "demonstrable risks" Newsom is talking about.

"Governor Newsom knows more than anyone how important California's leadership is when the federal government doesn't get the job done," said state senator Scott Wiener in a statement to TechCrunch. "The work of the Governor and the First Partner drawing attention to what's at stake with social media originates in the failure of the federal government to regulate social media. I have every confidence that the Governor will give this bill the attention it deserves."

It's a failure of federal regulation to prevent that, Newsom said Tuesday about the federal government. The governor pointed out how California was the first place to move on some forms of tech regulation -- social media and privacy -- and he's not surprised that people are turning to the state again. But Newsom says he is being cautious not to waste an early lead on AI.

"This is a space where we own, and I want to keep owning," said Newsom. "But at the same time, you feel a deep sense of responsibility to address some of the more extreme concerns that many of us have — even the biggest and strongest promoters of this technology have — and that's a difficult place to land."

Newsom made reference to the fact that perhaps it was overstated that signing SB 1047 would turn upside down overnight the AI industry. But he noted how the effect of signing the wrong bills over a few years could profoundly affect California's dominance.

The California governor didn't say on Tuesday whether he would sign or veto the bill. He said for the LA Times that he has yet to decide on the bill. On the side of opposition are OpenAI, Nancy Pelosi, United States Chamber of Commerce, and Big Tech trade groups, which urge Newsom to veto SB 1047. On the other hand, Elon Musk and Anthropic expressed lukewarm enthusiasm, while some renowned AI researchers like Yoshua Bengio and Geoffrey Hinton are in full support of SB 1047.

"We're hopeful that the Governor will sign SB 1047 because he knows the bottom line-if California won't lead on safe and responsible AI innovation, who will?, said Nathan Calvin, senior policy counsel of the Center for AI Safety Action Fund, in a statement to TechCrunch.

He has two weeks to decide, so for now, we are left with a heap of rhetoric that doesn't bode well for the bill's prospects.