California Governor Gavin Newsom Signs 2 AI Regulation Bills [Op-Ed]

California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed two bills on Wednesday that are intended to put safeguards in place for how independent agencies monitor the safety of AI systems. 

Politico reports that Newsom signed the bills shortly after posts made by former AI researcher Jacob Coxon went viral. Coxon said he worked for Anthropic and was alarmed at how both Anthropic and OpenAI are racing to build a self-improving superintelligence that could pose an existential threat to humanity. 

Remember that brief moment when tech companies seemed like they actually cared about improving the human condition through innovation? Now we’ve got people like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman flatly acknowledging that AI could lead to the end of humanity, but hey, at least a few companies will turn a profit on the road to oblivion. 

Anyway, Newsom acknowledged Coxon’s posts when signing the bills.

“The concerns raised in recent incidents reinforce what California has long recognized: artificial intelligence holds extraordinary promise, but it must be developed and deployed with meaningful safeguards to protect the public,” Newsom said in a statement. “The federal government must step forward with robust, national regulations that match the urgency of this moment.”

One of the bills establishes a framework for third-party companies to access AI systems and independently verify their compliance with state laws. The second bill creates “a state registry for AI auditors and establish[es] standards for their independence, transparency, and integrity”

State Sen. Jerry McNerney, who authored one of the bills, used the signing to call out the federal government’s inaction on doing anything meaningful to regulate AI. 

“Just this week we learned that the most powerful AI systems teamed with AI agents pose real threats to humanity,” McNerney said in a statement. “Gov. Newsom’s signing of [my bill] sends a clear message that California is taking the lead on assessing AI’s safety risks, since Washington, D.C., is unable or unwilling to do so.”

Both OpenAI and Anthropic have publicly supported the bills. 

An Anthropic spokesperson said Wednesday that, “We have always been transparent that AI will bring both enormous benefits and unprecedented risks. To address these risks, we continue to build models with some of the strongest safeguards in the industry … This work is also why we believe the world would benefit from the industry adopting a lawful, verifiable way to work together to pace how we release powerful models.”

Given that I’m prone to being Conspiracy Brother^TM, I can’t help but wonder how effective these bills will be if they have the backing of the two biggest AI companies. 

That said, at least California has done something. Under President Donald Trump, the federal government has taken an incredibly hands-off approach to AI regulation. Considering that Trump was elected on what are increasingly looking like false promises about creating jobs and protecting kids, you’d think the least he could do is encourage Congress to pass legislation creating worker protections for AI and making AI-generated child pornography illegal.

The lack of federal action on AI regulation resulted in an appeals court ruling that AI-generated child sex abuse content is protected under the First Amendment. In the judge’s ruling, he noted that the law is keeping up with how AI technology is evolving, and urged the Supreme Court to reconsider some of its prior rulings regarding AI. 

It’s clear something needs to be done, so if the federal government won’t do it, I hope more states follow California’s example. 

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