Gavin Newsom Signs Executive Order To Address AI Disruption

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order on Thursday designed to address fears of massive job displacement from AI.

Newsom’s action came amid as President Donald Trump was preparing to sign his own executive order. But that ceremony has been postponed, Trump told reporters. A number of top tech executives were expected to attend the ceremony.

Newsom’s order directs the state to examine policies to assist displaced workers, including severance standards, employment insurance and transition support. It also calls for better tracking of hiring and payroll trends, and calls for modernizing job training programs.

“This moment demands that we reimagine the entire system — how we work, how we govern, how we prepare people for the future — and that work is starting right here in the Golden State,” Newsom said in a statement.

Newsom’s press office noted Trump’s delay, posting on X, “Trump CANCELS his AI executive order after Governor Gavin Newsom releases his worker-focused EO earlier in the morning.”

Trump’s executive order was expected to require that federal cybersecurity officials develop a process for evaluating the safety of AI models before public release, according to The New York Times. That would be a shift away from the hands off approach that the Trump administration has so far taken on AI’s development, and towards the kind of review proposed by President Joe Biden.

But that new policy is now in doubt.

Trump told reporters, per a pool report, “I didn’t like certain aspects of it, I postponed it. I think it gets in the way of, you know, we’re leading China, we’re leading everybody, and I don’t want to do anything that’s going to get in the way of that lead. We have a very substantial standard on AI … it’s causing tremendous good, and it’s also bringing in a lot of jobs, tremendous numbers of jobs. Again, we have more people working right now than we’ve ever had. I really thought that could have been a blocker.”

Public attitudes toward AI have turned negative. A recent YouGov poll showed majorities of Americans said AI was moving too fast, doubt economic gains, fear it will replace jobs and are pessimistic about its longterm impact.