Anthropic tells Newsom courts should be able to block risky AI models

In an Oct. 15 letter to California Gov. Gavin Newsom, first reported by Politico, Anthropic said the state attorney general should be able to seek a court order suspending a model's deployment, internal use or further development if it poses a near-term risk of catastrophic harm. The company backed independent safety evaluators embedded inside frontier AI firms and risk reports at least every six months, but warned that whole-model 'kill switches' could give a false sense of reassurance, favoring targeted steps like disabling a specific agent or cutting off a customer. Anthropic confirmed the letter to Reuters; OpenAI sent its own recommendations to Newsom on Oct. 20.