California lawmakers, clinicians and tech leaders weigh generative AI’s promise and risks for health care

A joint informational hearing of the California State Assembly’s Health Committee and Privacy Committee gathered experts, health system leaders, patient advocates and labor representatives to examine current uses of generative artificial intelligence in health care, potential benefits and documented risks, and the role state policy could play in ensuring equitable, safe deployment.

The hearing opened with Chair Bonta and Chair Bauer Kahan urging lawmakers to consider both opportunity and risk as AI tools — from ambient scribes to imaging triage and predictive risk models — are adopted. "We have a responsibility to pay attention to all of these developments, ask these questions, and help guide the technology in ways that maximize benefit to Californians and minimize harm," Chair Bonta said.

The witnesses described real-world deployments and measurable early impacts. Craig Kwiatkowski, speaking for Cedars‑Sinai, said many AI tools are designed to "extend, enhance, assist, and augment" clinicians and stressed organizational governance of AI at his health system. Kaiser Permanente’s Daniel Yang said his system has deployed an ambient scribe to more than 25,000 doctors and reported that the tool has been used in over 6 million encounters; he acknowledged testing and ongoing monitoring but added the deployment was intended to reduce clinician administrative burden and improve patient–clinician interaction. "There’s only one way for me to guarantee that we can eliminate risks associated with AI in health care," Yang said, "and that is for me to never deploy these AI technologies at all," a position he said would, however, accept the status quo of…