Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Faculty Protections topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Committee advances bill to bar CSU from replacing faculty with AI tools
Summary
The Assembly Higher Education Committee voted to pass SB 928 to the Assembly floor. The bill would require that CSU faculty employees — including professors, lecturers, librarians, counselors and coaches — be human, aiming to prevent AI from replacing those roles; testimony cited recent CSU contracts with AI vendors.
The Assembly Higher Education Committee on Tuesday voted to pass SB 928 to the Assembly floor. Authored by Senator Cervantes, the bill would explicitly require that faculty employees at the California State University (CSU) system — including professors, lecturers, librarians, counselors and coaches — be human and not be replaced by artificial intelligence tools.
Senator Cervantes told the committee that while AI can be a useful tool, it should not replace human faculty. He said institutions are integrating AI into courses and services without clear guardrails. Eric Paredes of the California Faculty Association, a sponsor of the bill, and Kevin Weir, a sociology professor at Sacramento State, testified in support. Weir described campus incidents where a counselor bot was introduced and referenced reporting about an "AI librarian" on a San Jose campus, arguing that student-facing roles require human judgment and mentorship that AI cannot replicate.
During testimony, Senator Cervantes and witnesses cited a February 2025 CSU contract described in the hearing as a $17,000,000 agreement with OpenAI to provide ChatGPT EDU to faculty, staff and students on the system’s 22 campuses; the senator also said CSU renewed a systemwide contract in May 2026 for a three‑year term at approximately $13,000,000 annually. Supporters said SB 928 would preserve human-led instruction and student support while still allowing developing technologies to be used as tools to support faculty tasks. Committee members sought and received clarifications that the bill’s definition of "faculty employee" mirrors CSU collective bargaining definitions, that it covers instructional and related noninstructional faculty roles (for example, librarians and counselors), and that it does not sweep in classified staff or administrators.
The committee voted to pass SB 928 to the Assembly floor by roll call; the clerk reported the motion carried and the measure was ordered to the floor. The bill’s author said he would add two Assembly members as coauthors and that he would continue working with stakeholders on the language.
