California Governor Newsom advances AI 'kill switch' bill over safety fears

Gavin Newsom advances AI ‘kill switch’ in response to safety fears

California Governor Gavin Newsom is advancing a bill that would require developers of large AI models to build a remote 'kill switch' for emergency shutdowns. The bill targets models trained with over 10^26 FLOPS, which currently covers only a handful of frontier labs. Developers must also submit annual safety reports and immediately notify the state if a model shows dangerous capabilities like self-replication or evading human oversight. The article does not specify the bill's legislative timeline or upcoming vote dates.

Why it matters: Concrete regulatory progress from California with a hard compute threshold and specific safety requirements. Not scored higher because the bill is still advancing, not yet enacted, and the FT excerpt doesn't disclose further technical details.