August 31, 2026 | Blog
Ensuring New Technologies Benefit All Californians
Every day, California families are witnessing new deployments of technology that are changing how we live and how we work. While this can come with uncertainty, we know we can't simply sit back and watch the future happen to us. Technological progress must benefit all Californians.
By Secretary Rohit Chopra
Last month, Governor Newsom announced the launch of the Business & Consumer Services Agency. The new agency consolidates dozens of boards, bureaus, and departments under one umbrella, improving coordination and enforcement across sectors that touch the daily lives of Californians — from financial services and health care to real estate, retail, hospitality, agriculture, and higher education.
A top priority for the new agency will be to ensure that new technologies actually help us, rather than undermine our health and safety.
The new agency's departments, boards, and bureaus work to protect people when seeking medical care, repairing their home or car, and managing their finances. California law already requires that businesses and professionals obtain a license and adhere to consumer protections. This helps to create trust, maintain quality, and ensure accountability when things go wrong.
Many of the Agency's licensees have deployed devices, software, and other technology to supplement the work of a skilled professional. However, Californians are also finding that many of their day–to–day experiences as a consumer now force them to interact with a chatbot or other technology simulating a human interaction. For our skilled professionals, their work is also quickly changing.
While technological advances can help us shop for products and services at competitive prices and do our jobs better, technologies are also being used to perpetrate scams, drive up prices, exploit our data, and make us less secure.
The Business & Consumer Services Agency will investigate how businesses are using new technologies to ensure that they aren't harming consumers or undermining longstanding legal protections. For example, we will be examining whether certain uses of these new technologies may violate prohibitions on unlicensed practice of medicine or another profession. We will be working closely with other agencies and departments in specific sectors of the California economy, like health care and housing.
Our work complements many other efforts by the Newsom Administration to prepare California for potential disruptions driven by artificial intelligence and new technologies. Right now, we're working to ensure that our licensing, regulation, and enforcement practices are meeting the moment to protect Californians.
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