Get the news that matters to all Californians. Start every week informed.Assemblymember Jacqui Irwin of Thousand Oaks talks to colleagues before the start of the Assembly session in 2014. Rich Pedroncelli, AP PhotoAssemblymember Jacqui Irwin may be the Legislature’s top tech industry expert and its occasional champion. Now, she’s taking on tech over artificial intelligence.
Irwin said the requirement to disclose training data could also help ward against potential biases in the AI software’s decision making. where she heard a doctors’ group discuss using AI in dispensing medication. The problem, she said, was that it wasn’t clear whether such systems had inherent biases since the companies aren’t required to disclose the data they used to train their systems.
Her office provided what it called a “non-exhaustive” list of 13 other tech and cybersecurity bills Irwin has authored, most of which passed. Some of them were also opposed by the tech industry, which has donated at least $288,000 to her campaigns over the years, according to the At the time, Irwin’s husband, Jon, was the chief operating officer of Amazon-owned Ring, raising the appearance of a conflict of interest given the Privacy Act regulated the company.
In her interview last week with CalMatters, Irwin declined to provide a more precise figure for the Amazon stock sales or address her other recent investments in tech. She said she complied with the state’s ethics disclosure requirements, and that her and her husband’s investments don’t factor into her decision-making process.