Won't AI companies just pack up and move?
I don't think there is any benefit, and there is massive cost to moving for any company, especially one that is built on a highly specialized labor force that doesn't want to move. At least, that's my best reading of this article's interpretation of the law's impact.
California is banking way too hard on people who want to work for companies that do not want to pay them enough to live there, do not want to pay them to work remotely, actively campaign against building more housing, and actively support immigration policies that continue to push down the wages of these individuals as well as make this "specialized" labor force less "specialized."
You would assume that there's a limit to what both the workers and the businesses are willing to put up with.
But those employees are not the ones that caused OpenAI to start and headquarter in San Francisco. Its started there becuase of the employees that do get paid enough to live in the state comfortably, and benefit massively from the aggregation of capital and experience in the Bay Area.
Perhaps somebody else can do the same elsewhere! Which would be interesting to see.
California treats anybody with less than several million in net worth and less than $400k/year in household income absolutely terribly. But that's a far bigger impact than this proposed AI legislation.
Also don't think that this workforce is exclusive to CA. AI is easy to learn, it's not quantum physics.
https://www.nerdwallet.com/cost-of-living-calculator/city-li...
https://www.nerdwallet.com/cost-of-living-calculator/city-li...
The people leaving California don't really want to leave, they are just being forced out by high costs. Those who have high incomes and can afford housing, like all those OpenAI employees, are staying.
OpenAI isn't looking for just another person that picked up AI on a whim, they are looking for people that are driving the field forward so that OpenAI stays at the very forefront. These sorts of people could learn quantum physics easily, and many probably have in their undergraduate (or graduate) degrees.
The reason is simply because ML is incomplete and thus right now is more art then science. We only understand these neural networks from the perspective of an analogy. The curve fitting analogy. Its nowhere near something like general relativity where even an analogy doesn't convey full understanding.
Much more wealth is generated, many more industries have been born and thrived, in places like CA and NY than in less-regulated, lower-wage, no/low-tax states. The correlation looks very strong by the eyeball method.
Also, LA put in a tax regime where all the studios left the city for neighbors like Burbank and Culver City.
They incorporate in Deleware, where they don't locate. That's irrelevant. California's economy and business is incredible, historic.