Government should regulate AI misuse and harm, not the basic technology

OPINION – As a former corporate employee and now a minority business owner, I have worked tirelessly to reduce workplace bias and discrimination. With my new company, I’m successfully using artificial intelligence to help solve these vexing problems, so I was surprised and disappointed when I recently reviewed well-intended, but terribly misguided, AI bias legislation being considered by California legislators.

In 2021, I started building an AI-powered coaching platform that helps strengthen emotional intelligence and soft skills in the workplace. This helps companies and individual employees in two important ways. First, it helps people recognize if bias might be creeping into their thinking and decision-making. Second, it helps those with bias-related concerns and frustrations articulate them in effective communications that are likely to produce constructive instead of defensive responses.

Helping employees initiate positive change is empowering to them and good for companies. I wish that I’d had similar coaching as a Latina manager climbing my early-career ladder, and I’m proud that our young company – innovatively with AI – has helped many people and employers accomplish this. I wish California legislators would stop rushing to legislate AI, and would appreciate its positive power.

It seems that most AI discussion in Sacramento is focused on Senator Wiener’s bill that focuses on large AI models and potential risks. But Assembly Bill 2930, authored by Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, disappoints me more because I passionately agree with its anti-discrimination goals, and yet I know it will hurt our ability to reduce workplace bias.

Anti-discrimination laws have historically operated retrospectively, because we can only determine if a decision was discriminatory, or what factors produced discriminatory outcomes, after the decision occurs or many decisions occur and patterns are evident. AB 2930 nobly tries to stop discrimination prospectively by regulating the technology before it is ever used. The proposed regulations would not mandate how to build or operate AI models or AI-influenced services, but would impose expensive and difficult pre-release risk assessments, predictions, evaluations, and mandatory governance programs for all AI startups like mine.

I know many founders building AI-forward companies that proactively address the very problems that this bill tries to prevent. They use AI to help people access better education, receive personalized health services, and get lower-cost mortgages. However, funding will disappear and missions will be aborted if AI startups are saddled with costly governance mandates, burdensome risk assessments and reporting requirements, and constant evaluation obligations.

In contrast, the government doesn’t impose these burdens on companies that make the same consequential decisions using only their brains and calculators, nor businesses that get decision support from consultants. Why would the government bury small companies that use technology responsibly to produce better decisions in paperwork? If AB 2930 becomes law, startups like mine will be at a significant disadvantage and the large AI developers will be advantaged. It will badly hurt small firms’ ability to build specialized AI solutions that solve addressable problems and contribute mightily to California’s world-leading innovation economy.

California has a long history of strong anti-discrimination laws that I support, and I have dedicated my career to helping people feel safe and supported at work. This wouldn’t be possible at scale without the magic of AI, and if AB 2930 passes, it definitely won’t be possible.

I am a proud AI optimist who is not hiding from its risks, but I am urging lawmakers to reject legislating from a place of fear and embrace the opportunity of AI. We need balanced AI legislation that promotes the good and addresses the risks. Our lawmakers must do better.

Remy Meraz is the Co-Founder and CEO of Zella Life, an AI-powered coaching platform that helps strengthen soft skills and emotional intelligence in the workplace.