from Hacker News

'Under tremendous pressure': Newsom vetoes long-awaited AI chatbot bill

by voxadam on 10/14/25, 10:40 PM with 5 comments

• by delichon on 10/14/25, 10:55 PM

  > he said he was concerned the law could “unintentionally” impose a total ban on the use of AI chatbots by minors.

  To a lot of people here that's a feature. I don't think so. It would put California minors at a huge economic disadvantage to kids in other places. One state can't put AI back in the box. I think California has the right to run that experiment, but Newsom made a wise choice in stopping it.

• by Terr_ on 10/14/25, 11:30 PM

  OK, so this one bill (AB 1064) is an exception among a bunch of other related bills that are being signed into law, let's take a look at the text [0]... Huh, pleasingly shorter than expected, I'm not noticing any obvious "that'll backfire horribly" stuff...

  > is not foreseeably capable

  I'm not sure how much consistency there is in "foreseeably" when it comes to LLMs these days. Even among programmers, let alone the general public.

  > 22757.22.(a)(5) [It may not foreseeably be capable of:] Prioritizing validation of the user’s beliefs, preferences, or desires over factual accuracy or the child’s safety.

  So if a kid says "I like chocolate", and it says "Everybody does, it's yummy", isn't that technically a violation? How should a court rule if a lawsuit occurs?

  [0] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...