Newsom Killed The AI Kill Switch

Amid mounting warnings that artificial intelligence could lead to the end of humanity, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), a leading 2028 presidential hopeful, has been pushing new, but limited , AI safeguards as he adopts a more populist stance on the emerging technology. What he’d likely prefer to downplay is his veto of a bill designed to guard against the AI apocalypse — at the urging of California-based Big Tech companies whose employees now say doomsday could be closer than ever.

Two years ago, Newsom vetoed a California bill, Senate Bill 1047 , that would have held AI firms liable for damages unleashed on society and required a “kill switch” for AI systems that went rogue. While the bill was framed as a potential model for the rest of the country, Newsom said his veto aimed to protect the public “against actual threats without unnecessarily thwarting the promise of this technology to advance the public good.”

Insiders now say AI’s threats are more pronounced than ever. Whistleblowers from the major AI giants Anthropic and OpenAI just caused a media firestorm by warning that the tech is “ gambling with our lives ” and could lead to human extinction “ within the next decade .” Even the architect of President Donald Trump’s deregulatory AI efforts recently admitted he downplayed the risks of “rogue agents” becoming unstoppable in ways that “could go very, very poorly for human beings.”

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OpenAI, Google, and Meta advocated against the kill-switch bill in 2024. Anthropic, which has positioned itself as taking a more guarded approach to AI development, cautiously supported the bill after it weakened the legislation's safeguards. Newsom would go on to sign an AI safety law the following year — but without the kill-switch requirement.

Newsom has ties to many of the tech firms who fought the more stringent regulations.

Silicon Valley venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz retained Axiom Advisors, co-founded by longtime Newsom adviser Jason Kinney, to lobby against the bill, while another tech venture capital firm, Y Combinator, hired lobbyist Darius Anderson, who’d previously served on Newsom’s California Fish and Game Commission.

Ron Conway, a tech tycoon and Newsom ally, helped lead opposition to the kill-switch bill. Conway spent $200,000 to fight a 2021 effort to recall Newsom and personally thanked the governor for vetoing SB 1047. Priscilla Chan, wife of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, gave $750,000 to the 2021 anti-recall campaign, while Google CEO Eric Schmidt gave $100,000 to the effort.

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And during the COVID-19 pandemic, Google and Facebook contributed $34 million in “behested payments” requested by Newsom to bolster public-health advertising and other programs, although the governor’s office defended the moves as legal and transparent public funding. Now, lawmakers are saying the safeguards proposed by SB 1047 are exactly what is needed. “Exhibit number 739 for why we need to pass the bipartisan AI Kill Switch Bill asap,” Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) wrote on X in response to the new whistleblower accounts, while Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) announced he’ll be introducing legislation “to ban superintelligence and pause AI development.”

The shoo-in for Newsom’s gubernatorial replacement, California Democratic nominee Xavier Becerra, also weighed in amid the uproar, noting that “the race toward superintelligence is moving faster than our ability to understand or control the risks” and “more must be done to regulate the AI industry.”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include information on Newsom’s ties to tech companies that opposed Senate Bill 1047.