Gavin Newsom Signs Executive Order To Speed Up AI Oversight And Create a ‘Kill Switch’

California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday issued an executive order to "dramatically accelerate independent oversight of AI companies and advance the creation of an 'AI kill switch'" as concerns about whether humanity will be able to contain the technology dominate the public debate.

"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," he added.

The order calls on a group of experts to create guidelines for the state to strengthen AI safety and security laws within a two-month period.

The order comes shortly after Geoffrey Hinton, known as the "Godfather of AI," said Congress is running out of time to regulate artificial intelligence before losing the ability to do so.

Speaking to lawmakers behind closed doors, Hinton said Congress has "maybe a year, but not much more than a year."

He went on to say that "if you look at predictions for when we'll get superintelligence," the timeline "used to be maybe 30 years, maybe 50 years" but then it kept getting lowered.

"Then it came down to maybe 10 years, maybe 20 years. Now people are saying, a lot of the researchers are saying only a few years," Hinton added.

Speaking to reporters after the briefing, Hinton said "AI has now reached the point where AI is designing better AI," a milestone known as recursive self-improvement.

"It is going to get out of control unless we do something. We need to slow down," he warned.

Leaders of several major AI companies made an unusual public push to slow the pace at which increasingly capable models are developed. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei last weekend called for frontier AI companies to give safety work more time to catch up with rapidly improving model capabilities, drawing support from Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

Other companies said they are already collaborating. OpenAI's policy chief, Chris Lehane, told Bloomberg News that the company is working with Anthropic and Alphabet on AI Safety.

He went on to say that the companies have been in talks for several weeks and doesn't believe they need an antitrust waiver to coordinate. "It's better to try to work together to prioritize safety," he said.

Elon Musk also said he wants for the world's biggest artificial intelligence companies to test each others' models before they are released.