Anthropic and OpenAI differ on who should halt high-risk AI

Anthropic and OpenAI each submitted comments to California Governor Newsom, proposing opposing approaches to halting frontier AI with serious risks. Anthropic argues that if the Attorney General, after an independent assessment, determines that a frontier model poses a near-term risk of catastrophic harm, the Attorney General should be able to seek a court order pausing the model's deployment, internal use, or further development. OpenAI calls for amending California SB 53, requiring frontier developers to maintain effective shutdown controls and to bear enforceable use obligations when unsafe conditions arise. Both comments respond to Newsom's September 18 executive order N-9-26 requiring AI safety law amendment recommendations to be submitted by November 16, and both support independent safety evaluations and expanded safety incident reporting. Anthropic also proposes that developers publish risk reports every six months and replace a single switch with circuit-breaker-style tiered controls; OpenAI argues for multiple controls such as stopping training, isolating agents, and revoking tool or network access, and recommends working with NIST to develop unified evaluation standards.