The California state Senate recently sent two tech bills to Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom's desk. If signed, one could make it harder for children to access mental health resources, and the other would create the most annoying Instagram experience imaginable.
The Leading Ethical AI Development (LEAD) for Kids Act prohibits "making a companion chatbot available to a child unless the companion chatbot is not foreseeably capable of doing certain things that could harm a child." The bill's introduction specifies the "things" that could harm a child as genuinely bad stuff: self-harm, suicidal ideation, violence, consumption of drugs or alcohol, and disordered eating.
Unfortunately, the bill's ambiguous language sloppily defines what outputs from an AI companion chatbot would meet these criteria. The verb preceding these buckets is not "telling," "directing," "mandating," or some other directive, but "encouraging."
