In an interview with The Examiner, gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer indicated he’d be much more open to regulating AI than Gov. Gavin Newsom
Gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer says that, if elected, he would be much more amenable to setting limits on artificial intelligence and the companies developing it than his predecessor. Gov. Gavin Newsom has taken a somewhat skeptical view of regulating artificial intelligence, but in an in interview with The Examiner on Monday, Steyer said he wants to protect state residents “from the potentially dangerous impacts of a new technology.
” “It’s really important that we think about this in terms of protecting people’s livelihoods, protecting people’s safety,” he said. Steyer laid out his general approach to AI in a plan he released last week, making him the first gubernatorial candidate to offer a comprehensive program for the technology. In the interview, he got into some of the specifics of his plan. The billionaire and climate activist told the Examiner he opposes the deployment of driverless big-rig trucks; believes humans need to be in the loop with automated systems that can make decisions involving such things as health or safety; and thinks AI systems should be tested before they are deployed, including for whether they might encourage suicide or self-harm. How the AI industry is regulated is of critical import to San Francisco and the wider Bay Area. The City is home to numerous AI startups, including the two most valuable, best-funded private companies in the industry — OpenAI and Anthropic. Other major players in the industry, including Meta, Alphabet and Nvidia, are based in Silicon Valley. In recent years, thanks to being ground zero for AI development, San Francisco and Silicon Valley have garnered the lion’s share of venture financing. The money that’s pouring into the sector is helping The City’s depressed office market rebound, and the thriving AI companies are contributing to a sense that downtown is recovering from its post-pandemic slump. At the same time, City residents have had up close view of some of the downsides of AI and automation, including the striking and critical injuring of a pedestrian by a Cruise self-driving car in late 2023; the widespread traffic impacts related to the disruption of Waymo autonomous vehicle service during a power outage in December; the construction and operation of data centers that rely on pollutant-emitting fossil-fuel backup generators in neighborhoods already dealing with a legacy of pollution; and the inducement of delusions by AI chatbots. With Congress having passed no AI laws, and President Donald Trump ditching the guidelines issued by his predecessor, Joe Biden, states have taken center stage in regulating the technology. California has already started to take on an outsized in determining what limits to place on AI, due in part to the concentration of the industry here. Steyer’s AI policies aren’t just focused on regulation. He also wants to promote the industry by making computing resources more widely available, including through the state’s universities. And he sees his broader focus on making California more affordable — by building more homes and lowering utility rates, among other things — as benefitting AI and other companies by keeping their workers’ costs in check.Last year, the governor vetoed a bill that would have barred AI developers from allowing kids to use their chatbots unless they could show the systems wouldn’t encourage suicide or self-harm. He also rejected a bill that would have prohibited employers from automating decisions about firing and disciplining of employees. Two years earlier, Newsom vetoed legislation that would have required human drivers to be present in autonomous trucks. Contrary to that idea, the state Department of Motor Vehicles has been pushing forward with new regulations that would give the green light to such vehicles operating without people on board. Steyer, who is among eight prominent Democrats left in the race for governor, said he wants to help maintain California’s lead in AI development and make it easier to build and grow those and other businesses in the state. But AI and the tech industry are subject to society’s rules, he said. And as governor, he wouldn’t sacrifice public safety just so such businesses can make more money, he said.That focus on protecting people is why he’s opposed to driverless trucks, Steyer said. Such vehicles might save companies money, he said. But the technology is “very far” from being ready to be deployed safely, and it would be “reckless” to allow that to happen, he said.Driverless trucks have been staunchly opposed by the Teamsters union and the California Labor Federation, which see them not only as unsafe but as a threat to the jobs of hundreds of thousands of truck drivers. Other states, including Texas, already allow self-driving trucks, and industry figures have argued they are safer than human drivers. Steyer, the former manager of a San Francisco hedge fund, has been actively seeking support from labor unions in his gubernatorial run. In a statement, Steve Hilton, one of two leading Republican gubernatorial candidates, criticized Steyer’s AI plan, taking particular aim at Steyer’s courting of labor. Steyer’s plan “is a hilarious combination of platitudes and pandering: half of it is completely unobjectionable aspiration that no reasonable person could object to, the other half is craven pandering to the unions in a desperate bid to win their endorsement,” Hilton said. “How can any Democrat get the answer right on AI when they have already given us the worst business climate in the country? It's time for change in California not more of the same.” Ex // Top Stories More than 100 free concerts coming to Golden Gate Park The sixth annual Illuminate Live series at band shell already underway, with frequent concerts scheduled through mid-November Iraq and Iran are different, but arguments against both wars are similar Iran does not present an imminent threat, much like Iraq nearly 25 years ago Anthropic dispute points to lack of regulations in use of AI in war Without federal legal restrictions on the military’s use of the technology, the limits have been left up to companies and the Pentagon, despite problems with that approach To address the concern that AI could displace or replace workers, Steyer proposes taxing AI companies to create a fund that would be used for things such as education and retraining and making investments that would be broadly beneficial to state residents. Betty Yee, one of Steyer’s Democratic rivals in the gubernatorial race, has pitched a similar proposal. Her plan would levy a special tax on the state’s big tech companies to provide income support to workers displaced by AI while they’re doing job retraining. She proposed the plan “to ensure California’s working class isn’t abandoned by the billionaire class as we transition to an AI-powered economy,” Yee said in an emailed statement.Meanwhile, Adrian Rafizadeh, the campaign manager for another Democratic rival, Matt Mahan, said Steyer’s proposals are similar to what the San Jose mayor is already doing. Since he took office three years ago, Mahan has been pushing policies to retrain workers for the AI economy and to integrate the technology into the city’s operations to improve services, Rafizadeh said. “California doesn’t need another white paper on AI,” he said. “It needs a governor who has already proven they can implement it responsibly for the collective good.” On driverless vehicles, Steyer indicated he would be open to giving cities such as San Francisco some level of local control. Currently, local jurisdictions have basically no regulatory authority over autonomous vehicles or robotaxi services. Instead, the DMV determines whether to allow companies to operate such vehicles on the state’s roads, including without a human driver. The California Public Utilities Commission is in charge of whether and where such companies can offer commercial ride-hailing services. Neither agency limits the number of vehicles robotaxi operators such as Waymo can have in operation at any one time or place. In the wake of the Waymo disruption in December, Supervisor Jackie Fielder and some labor groups have been calling for more local control over robotaxis. A bill that would have allowed cities to limit the number of such vehicles on their roads died in the Legislature two years ago. “The reason people in San Francisco were upset is because they felt like they weren’t getting the controls that they thought they wanted from the state,” Steyer said. “In every single issue I see, there is a need for basic rules , and there’s a need for specific rules at the local level,” he said. One general rule Steyer said he supports is that humans should oversee automated systems, particularly those that could affect safety, health or “fairness.” He said he would reach out to organized labor to get their input on how to regulate such systems. Automated systems are used to determine the routes delivery drivers take, rate and track the efficiency and productivity of warehouse workers; and help determine care in hospitals. Steyer likened the danger of allowing such systems to operate without human oversight to the tragedies that have happened to some young people who have gotten into intimate relationships with chatbots. A growing number of children and even adults have died by suicide after allegedly being talked into by OpenAI’s ChatGPT or other chatbots. In many such cases, the AI systems allegedly failed to alert parents, counselors or other people about the delusions or suicidal thoughts the users were having and instead continued to interact with them unsupervised, Steyer noted. Steyer’s brother, Jim Steyer, is the founder and CEO of Common Sense Media, a parental advocacy organization that last fall issued a warning to parents urging them to prevent their kids from using chatbots for companionship or mental health support. “It’s going to be really important that we make sure that … there is that human touch in places where there’s dramatic human impact,” Steyer said. Along those lines, he said he supported requiring AI developers to safety test their systems including for whether they would encourage self-harm or suicide. Newsom in 2024 vetoed a bill from San Francisco Sen. Scott Wiener that would have required developers of cutting-edge AI systems to test whether they could be used to cause catastrophes such as mass casualty events and bar the systems’ release if they could. Last year, the governor vetoed legislation from Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan that would have required AI developers to test whether their systems would encourage suicide or self-harm among child users. Unless developers could show their systems were safe for kids, the measure would have prohibited them from allowing children to use them. Newsom did sign bills last year that require developers to disclose what kind of safety testing they are doing on their models and to prevent such system from encouraging suicidal thoughts. Steyer said he wasn’t familiar with Bauer-Kahan’s legislation, but he believes AI models need to be safety tested before they’re released.
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