Illinois has become the third state to impose transparency rules on AI companies, AP News reports. The broadly bipartisan new law passed the state House unanimously and the Senate with only five holdouts.
The new law looks to me like a small improvement to the status quo, extending the (relatively light) requirements already passed by California and New York and adding a requirement for annual third-party audits. I’m especially heartened by its bipartisan support. I’m even tentatively optimistic that two of the leading AI companies openly supported it; tentatively, because at least one of them probably hopes to make it a ceiling for regulation rather than a floor.
The law does have major limitations as a check on the deadly AI race. It mostly relies on AI companies to write their own safety frameworks and to catch and report potential catastrophes themselves, something I don’t think AI companies are competent to reliably do. And if the labs find the rules too onerous, they can simply ignore them and pay the fine — penalties cap out at $3 million per repeat violation, pocket change to a near-trillion-dollar company. (Though collectively, the three states with AI transparency laws constitute a difficult-to-ignore 40% of the U.S. AI market.)
America still needs to lead the world in seeking a global agreement on AI. I nonetheless applaud Illinois for taking one important step towards much-needed governance.
The analyses and opinions expressed on AI StopWatch reflect the views of the individual contributors and the sources they cover, and should not be taken as official positions of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute.