Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi issued a statement late yesterday laying out her opposition to SB 1047, a California bill that seeks to regulate AI.

“The view of many of us in Congress is that SB 1047 is well-intentioned but ill-informed,” Pelosi said. She noted that other congresspeople from the Bay Area — Zoe Lofgren, Anna Eshoo, and Ro Khanna — have expressed concerns about the bill, which she described as “more harmful than helpful.”

The bill was recently amended to address concerns from critics, including AI company Anthropic, and is currently headed to California’s Assembly for a vote. Since this is a state bill, Pelosi and others in Congress don’t have any official say — though Pelosi’s seniority and profile are likely to give her opinion weight with California politicians.

“AI springs from California,” she said. “We must have legislation that is a model for the nation and the world. We have the opportunity and responsibility to enable small entrepreneurs and academia — not big tech — to dominate.”

State senator Scott Wiener, who sponsored the bill, issued his own statement in response, saying that while he has "enormous respect" for Pelosi, "I respectfully and strongly disagree with her statement."

"The bill requires only the largest AI developers to do what each and every one of them has repeatedly committed to do: Perform basic safety testing on massively powerful AI models," Wiener added.

This article originally appeared on TechCrunch at https://techcrunch.com/2024/08/17/nancy-pelosi-criticizes-california-ai-bill-as-ill-informed/