Gavin Newsom plots ‘kill switch’ if AI gets out of control

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has issued an executive order intended to increase oversight of AI and potentially require a “kill switch” if the technology gets out of control, his office said Friday.

Newsom’s executive order asks state agencies to, among other things, recommend legislative changes to enhance independent reviews of the technology and consider a shut-off function after researchers raised alarms this month about the potential of rogue agents to wreak havoc on society.

The order also convenes a group of “world-leading experts” to write guidelines within two months for California to further develop AI safety laws, according to Newsom’s office.

Newsom’s executive order did not name the “experts” who will inform the new AI guardrails, but he has previously praised researchers from the University of California, MIT and Carnegie Mellon University, along with Fei-Fei Li — the Stanford professor known as the “godmother of AI.”

The order follows prior actions from Newsom intended to rein in aspects of AI and social media.

On Sept. 10, he signed a slew of technology-related bills while invoking a “five-alarm fire” about the trajectory of AI development, though he’s faced criticism for his veto of Senate Bill 1047, which sought to add controls to the technology, in 2024.

That bill, advanced by state Sen. Scott Wiener, sought to add safety, testing and liability requirements to AI development firms like Anthropic and OpenAI — including a “kill switch” idea requiring developers to retain the ability to shut off the tech.

“We must act with all possible haste to address the serious risks of AI-driven catastrophe, and I commend the Governor for taking this important step,” the San Francisco lawmaker said of Newsom’s executive order.

“Requiring emergency shutdown procedures, or kill switches, provides tangible guardrails to the public to prevent these disasters. I’m glad to see the strong AI safety framework I laid out in 2024 is still being used to guide policy in 2026,” Wiener said.

Newsom signed Senate Bill 53, which was considered a watered-down version of SB 1047, in 2025.

“I was very happy where we landed,” Newsom said of that veto at the Sept. 10 press conference.

Rising fears about AI came to a head this month when Jacob Coxon, a former researcher at Anthropic and OpenAI, quit his job and alleged the rapidly advancing technology could wipe out civilization if unchecked.

Those doomsday warnings were echoed by other AI experts including Bilal Chughtai, a former safety researcher at Google’s DeepMind, who wrote on Linkedin he “earnestly [believes] that AI has the potential to kill us all, and that we might be running out of time to avoid this outcome.”

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