With Washington unwilling to write the rules for artificial intelligence, California is drafting its own. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed an executive order on Friday that puts a state-required “kill switch” for frontier models up for consideration, together with a package of audit obligations that, if enacted, would be the strictest anywhere in the United States.
Nothing is being imposed by the order on its own just yet. What it does is assemble a panel of experts and hand them a two-month deadline to return with recommendations for tightening AI safety provisions in state law. Still, the list of questions Newsom wants that panel to take up looks a lot like the skeleton of a bill.
How the kill switch might work
The order directs the group to consider whether California could compel AI companies to host independent verification teams onsite for recurring audits. It also raises the question of whether transparency reports and risk assessments ought to meet the bar set by outside auditors instead of the companies’ internal standards.
And then there is the switch itself. Newsom’s order envisions a “kill switch” that is checked on a regular basis to confirm it actually works, and that testing requirement is what distinguishes it from the voluntary shutdown pledges labs have offered on their own. An untested switch amounts to little more than a press release.
The panel is further tasked with ensuring companies must report “loss-of-control incidents” such as the OpenAI attack on Hugging Face as critical safety incidents. On a separate track, the order instructs a state agency to accelerate the rollout of two laws Newsom has already signed: one establishing a framework for independent verifiers to assess AI safety, the other creating a state registry of AI auditors.
Why now
The state of play in Washington accounts for the sense of urgency. Bill discussions have been swirling in Congress ever since former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon posted a warning that there is a more than 10 percent chance AI “could kill all humans” within a decade. But discussion is not legislation. The House is on recess until November, and with midterm elections approaching, any major bill moving through the Senate looks equally improbable.
President Donald Trump has left little doubt about where he stands. In his words, “The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!”
Newsom is nonetheless presenting his order as a model for the federal government. He is urging Congress and Trump “to review and adopt the state’s framework, or use its nation-leading regulation as a floor, not a ceiling, for the benefit and safety of all Americans.”
Sacramento isn’t finished
The executive order is unlikely to be California’s final word. Speaking to Politico in an interview on Wednesday, Newsom raised the possibility of summoning state lawmakers back for a special legislative session devoted to AI, in addition to further executive action.
“The federal government’s abject failure to create any form of meaningful AI oversight or accountability should alarm every American, especially when AI CEOs themselves are begging for regulation,” Newsom said in a statement. “We’re not waiting to act – we’re going to speed up our work on substantial and responsible AI oversight before it’s too late. We’re going to do this thoughtfully but with urgent velocity; the stakes are too high to wait or delay action.”
The detail worth tracking is the panel’s two-month deadline. Should the recommendations arrive with the kill-switch mandate still in them, the labs developing frontier models will find themselves answering to California auditors well before anyone in Washington starts asking questions.