• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, January 3, 2024

California needs more money to support several laws that took effect on January 1, 2024, such as becoming the first state to offer free health insurance for all undocumented immigrants coming into the U.S. based on President Biden's policies, so it is going after an expanding industry that will affect each and every company that advertises or markets on the web.

To subsidize free health-care insurance for undocumented immigrants, lawmakers in the state will host a flurry of attempts to regulate the use of generative artificial intelligence (GAI) tools. Two Bay Area lawmakers reportedly are leading these efforts. 

One bill is aimed at the "potential impacts on privacy, discrimination, job protections and misinformation during an election year," according to the Associated Press, but it will certainly impact the way the advertising industry conducts business. 

Assembly member Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, who has taken on a new role as chair of the Assembly Privacy and Consumer Protection Committee, plans to introduce a bill to prohibit the use of AI systems that discriminate against people, which would have required companies to evaluate the algorithms they develop and disclose any potential discriminatory risks. She introduced a similar bill last year but could not advance it.

Bauer-Kahan will focus on creating bills to address specific “known harms” from the technology -- such as discrimination and bias in algorithms and maintaining the privacy of medical records as doctors embrace AI in their practices.

She expects all major AI legislation will come before her committee and that successful bills will need to show what specific problems they aim to address, according to the GT Industry Insider, which lists many bills in the works related to AI. 

State Senator Scott Wiener told the Associated Press that he plans to create an industry-wide safety framework to focus on tackling some of the biggest risks in public safety and security such as AI-generated bioweapons, cyberattacks and misinformation campaigns.

"If we can successfully land a workable bill in California, I think it will help as other states start to think about how to do this,” said Chandler Morse, vice president of corporate affairs for the finance and HR software company Workday, GT Industry Insider reported.

Workday in January said it would restructure and realign its business by eliminating 3% of its global workforce in response to a “challenging” global economic environment. No word if AI contributed to the decision for this company that relies heavily on automation.

CNBC reported that more than 100,000 U.S.-based technology company workers were laid off in 2023.