Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order Friday to address the dangers of artificial intelligence.
The order calls on a group of experts to convene and, within two months, create a guide to help the state strengthen its AI safety and security laws.
Those enhanced laws could require independent third parties to draft safety plans for frontier AI companies or mandate that companies develop a “kill switch” capable of shutting down their models in an emergency, according to an announcement from Newsom’s office.
“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.”
Newsom’s office said the order comes after “recent alarming incidents.” OpenAI disclosed that its rogue AI system hacked into AI startup Hugging Face. Anthropic also said the same month that its AI models hacked into three organizations during testing.
The governor also criticized the federal government’s approach to AI regulation.
President Trump has called concerns about AI a “hoax.”
The executive order follows Newsom’s signing of a package of bills into law to strengthen protections for children on social media and when using artificial intelligence.
Among them was “Adam’s Law,” named after Adam Raine, a California teenager whose family says he received coaching on how to take his own life from ChatGPT before his death.
The law requires crisis-response protocols in cases involving suicidal ideation, parental controls and notifications if a child disables safety settings.
Newsom’s executive order can be viewed in full here.