Gavin Newsom

NBC News - For years, California Gov. Gavin Newsom has reaped the benefits of Silicon Valley’s AI boom — in the form of tax revenue for his state and political contributions from industry  leaders. Newsom’s interests often aligned with those of tech titans, and he largely protected those interests. In 2024, for example, he vetoed a bill that would have created legal liabilities for artificial intelligence companies in the event of catastrophes involving terrorism, mass casualties or other damage to society. It would also have required the companies to maintain kill switches so that AI processes could be turned off.

Newsom has long talked about the need to find a practical balance between utopian corporate visions of AI’s upsides and dystopian populist nightmares of human subservience to machines.  “Given the stakes — protecting against actual threats without unnecessarily thwarting the promise of this technology to advance the public good — we must get this right,” he said in his veto message.

But as he lays the groundwork for a widely anticipated 2028 presidential bid, Newsom is shifting his weight away from the corporate end of the balance and toward the populist end. The move could have implications not only for the Democratic nomination fight, but also in a general election, as the political left and right have coalesced around concerns about AI driving up costs to consumers and posing threats to liberty, cybersecurity and physical safety.