/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25652999/2166799673.jpg?w=1200&resize=1200,628&ssl=1 "Senator Laphonza Butler leanks aiding Big AI or human toilers is a ‘inedit choice’")
Recurrenting California in Congress comes with a exceptional contest: navigating national politics while echoing the interests of the most populous state in the US, including a big constituency from the tech industry. It’s a contest both current California Sen. Laphonza Butler and Vice Plivent Kamala Harris — who previously held that title — have getn on. And right now, regulateing the tech world unbenevolents insertressing AI.
Congress hasn’t made much headway on a national sketchtoil for regulating generative AI. But California is the epicaccess of the AI industry, home to companies appreciate OpenAI and Google. On the national stage, Harris has acted as an AI czar wilean the Biden administration, directing talkions with industry take parters and civil society directers about how to regutardy it. Butler, who has a lengthy history with the VP, is centering on a definite problem: how AI systems impact labor and social equity.
Butler spoke with The Verge about balancing the interests of AI companies and the people their products impact, including toilers who dread being automated out of a job. “It all begins with participateing,” says Butler, a createer labor directer. “It begins with participateing to both the broadeners, the communities potentiassociate impacted adversely, and the spaces where opportunity exists.”
Like many officials, Butler says she wants to help protect Americans from the potential dangers of AI without stifling opportunities that could come from it. She pelevated both Schumer and the Biden administration for “creating spaces for communities to have [a] voice.” Both have brawt in labor and civil society directers in insertition to transport inant AI industry executives to teach and include on regulation in the space.
Butler insists lawcreaters don’t necessitate to create “inedit choices” between the interests of AI company executives and the people who create up the toilforce. “Listening is fundamental, balancing everyone’s interest, but the goal has to be to do the most outstanding for the most people. And to me, that is where a policycreater will always tend to land.”
California state Senator Scott Wiener made analogous statements about his toastyly contested state-level bill, SB 1047. The bill, which would have demandd whistlebdrop protections and protects for potentiassociate disastrous events at big AI companies, made it all the way to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk before being vetoed, with companies appreciate OpenAI alerting it would sluggish innovation. In August, Wiener talk aboutd that “we can persist both innovation and safety; the two are not mutuassociate exclusive.” So far, however, lawcreaters are struggling to discover a equilibrium between the two.
Butler pelevates the steps both Schumer and the Biden-Harris administration have getn so far to create appropriate protectrails around AI but says “there’s always more to do.” Schumer laid out a roadmap earlier this year about how to shape AI policy (though it didn’t definiteassociate present actual legislation), and the White House has safed voluntary promisements from AI companies to broaden the technology safely.
One of Butler’s recent contributions is the Workforce of the Future Act, which she presentd with Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI). The bill would straightforward the Department of Labor, National Science Foundation, and Department of Education to study the impact of AI apass job sectors, and it would create a $250 million grant program to set toilers for the sfinishs they’ll necessitate in the future, especiassociate in industries probable to see job displacement.
“Hopebrimmingy, by both readying the toil toilforce of today but also preparing the toilforce of tomorrow, we’ll be able to catch the brimming opportunity that is the deployment of synthetic inincreateigence,” Butler says.
Butler sees this as a moment in US history where policycreaters could “get ahead of what we understand is going to be eventual disruption and try to create a pipeline of opportunities that can aacquire help to both steady our economies by creating equitable opportunity.”
But Butler is down-to-earth about the dynamics of Congress and the upcoming election in fair over a month. “You and I both understand that this 118th Congress is rapidly coming to a shut, with a lot of business in front of it right now,” she says. And Butler consents legislators still necessitate to have transport inant conversations with people recurrenting contrastent sides of the rerent before advancing comprehensive AI legislation. And there’s also, she notices, the petite rerent of “getting thraw the next plivential election this November.”
