California Governor Gavin Newsom isn’t waiting for Washington. With federal legislation stalled by midterm elections and partisan gridlock, the Democratic governor issued an executive order Friday positioning the Golden State as the de facto regulator of artificial intelligence in the United States. The directive mandates a rapid two-month timeline for a panel of experts to draft recommendations on strengthening AI safety within state law. This isn’t just another committee formation; it is a direct challenge to the inertia in D.C., aiming to create a regulatory floor that other states—and potentially the federal government—must meet.
The proposals under consideration are aggressive. Newsom’s team is exploring requirements for AI companies to embed independent verification groups directly onsite for regular audits. They are also looking at mandating transparency reports subject to independent auditor standards and requiring firms to report “loss-of-control incidents” as critical safety events. Perhaps most striking is the potential mandate for a verified “kill switch” for frontier models. This mechanism would allow regulators or operators to shut down systems that exhibit dangerous, uncontrollable behavior, a concept gaining traction after high-profile security breaches like the OpenAI attack on Hugging Face.
This state-level assertiveness comes as former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon warned of a greater than 10 percent chance that AI could cause human extinction within a decade. While President Donald Trump dismisses the need for guardrails beyond a “strong and smart” president, Newsom argues that the federal government’s failure to act is alarming. He explicitly called on Congress and the White House to review California’s framework, urging them to use it as a baseline rather than a ceiling. By accelerating the implementation of recent laws creating a registry of AI auditors, California is building the infrastructure for oversight before federal counterparts even return from recess.
The move signals a shift in tech governance from voluntary corporate pledges to hard legal constraints. If California succeeds in operationalizing these audits and kill switches, it could force major tech firms to adopt a single, stringent standard nationwide to avoid fragmented compliance regimes. Newsom’s gamble is that urgency trumps political hesitation. Whether other states follow suit or push back against California’s overreach remains to be seen, but the era of self-regulation in AI appears to be ending.
