philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

Tech bros hate this college student. California should listen to what she’s saying about artificial intelligence

Columnist https://www.latimes.com/people/anita-chabria

... “Whatever long-term future AI creates, whether that’s positive or negative, it’s [my generation] that’s going to experience that,” she told me. “We’re going to inherit the impacts of the technology we’re building today.”

This week, California will make a big decision about that future, as legislators vote on Senate Bill 53. ...

The bill is a basic transparency measure and applies only to the big-gun developers of “frontier” AI models — these are the underlying, generic AI creatures that may later be honed into a specific purpose, like controlling our nuclear weapons, curing cancer or writing term papers for cheating students. 

But right now, companies are just seeing how smart and powerful they can make them, leaving any concerns about what they will actually do for the future — and for people like Revanur, whose lives will be shaped by them.

If passed, the law would require these developers to have safety and security protocols and make them public. ...

Big Tech has lobbied full force against the bill (and has been successful in watering it down some). Enter Revanur and the AI safety organization she started when she was 15: Encode. ...

Revanur and her group have gone from being dismissed with a “who are you, you’re nothing” attitude from lawmakers to having “an equal seat at the table” with the clouty tech bros and their billions, Tratten said. And they’ve done it through sheer persistence (though they are not the only advocacy group working on the bill). ...

See the full story here: https://www.latimes.com/politics/newsletter/2025-09-08/chabria-monday-politics-newsletter-ai-artificial-intelligence-sb-53