Source: Governor of California

Governor Gavin Newsom issued an executive order directing immediate actions to address dangers from recent AI incidents and to accelerate implementation of California’s new independent oversight and safety-check laws. The order convenes world-leading experts to produce, within two months, a guide to reinforce and strengthen state AI safety and security laws and proposes measures such as requiring independent third parties to write safety plans for frontier AI companies and requiring companies to develop an emergency shutoff or “kill switch.” The press release cites recent incidents, including the Hugging Face attack, and states that no federal law requires AI companies to report dangerous incidents and that the federal government has not enacted comparable measures.

The executive order instructs the Government Operations Agency to speed up timelines for SB 813 and AB 1405 and to consult with the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services while convening national experts to recommend potential statutory changes. Proposed directives include requiring frontier AI companies to embed designated independent verification organizations onsite to conduct regular audits; mandating that required safety frameworks, transparency reports, and risk assessments be verified according to independent standards; advancing the creation of a verifiable “kill switch” for frontier models with ongoing verification of its efficacy; and updating definitions of critical safety incidents to include loss-of-control incidents such as the Hugging Face attack. The release also references prior California measures (SB 53, SB 813, AB 1405, Adam’s Law and others) and calls on Congress and the President to adopt California’s framework as a national baseline.