Newsom ordered California to draft an AI kill switch after vetoing one two years ago
California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order Friday that convenes a panel of experts within 60 days on stricter rules for frontier AI companies, including a possible emergency shutoff, or kill switch, Dakota Smith at the Los Angeles Times reports. Deadline says the aim is strict guardrails by mid-next year.
A kill switch is a required way to shut down a frontier AI model in an emergency. An independent verification organization is an outside auditor that checks the company’s safety claims and whether the shutoff actually works. An onsite embed puts those auditors inside the lab, not only reading public reports.
The order directs the Government Operations Agency to accelerate SB 813 and AB 1405, California AI safety bills already in the pipeline, and to work with the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services on recommendations. Those include requiring frontier companies to embed a designated independent verification organization onsite for regular audits, requiring safety frameworks and risk assessments under state law to be verified to standards set by that organization, and advancing creation of a kill switch whose efficacy is checked on an ongoing basis.
Deadline also notes the order would update definitions of critical safety incidents to include loss-of-control incidents such as the Hugging Face attack.
About two years ago Newsom vetoed a state bill from Sen. Scott Wiener that would have mandated a kill switch for models firms directly control. The veto cited concern about stifling innovation and about smaller exempt models that could still be dangerous.
Newsom said California wants to create the standards in this space after what he called the federal government’s abject failure to create meaningful AI oversight. “We’re not waiting to act,” he said, per Deadline.
State Sen. Chris Cabaldon told the Times that fall AI hearings are planned and that the state’s current rules do not go far enough. “We regulate your barber or your sandwich shop more than we regulate [a company] telling us that they may be ending humanity,” he said.
The kill switch sits on a recommendation track for a panel that has 60 days to start writing the next California rulebook.