The FSF’s concerns go beyond whether AI platforms need kill switches. They extend to who controls them—and whether users will have any say.
On Sunday, the campaigns manager at the Free Software Foundation, Greg Farough, issued something of a caution in a post on the FSF website about mandating a kill switch in Artificial Intelligence platforms. The post was in reference to a recent executive order from California governor Gavin Newsom, in which he directs the California Government Operations agency to work with a panel of experts to investigate the feasibility of amending California state law to mandate the inclusion of “kill switches” on frontier platforms released by companies located in California.
The order, which was issued on September 18, actually involves more than kill switches, according to a press release from the governor’s office:
“The executive order convenes a group of world-leading experts to provide, within two months, a guide for California to reinforce and strengthen its AI safety and security laws. Proposals under consideration include requiring independent third parties to write safety plans for frontier AI companies, as well as requiring companies to develop an emergency shutoff, or ‘kill switch,’ for frontier models.”
Speaking for the FSF organization, Farough doesn’t take exception to a requirement for a kill switch (“having control over the technology we use is a fundamental part of software freedom,” he said), but thinks that access to the switch — specifically, who has access — should also be spelled out in the study, and made a part of any subsequent law.
“Newsom wisely wants an independent organization to verify their functionality, but even this still sets too dangerous of a precedent,” he wrote. “We cannot allow such centralization of power over our computing to become commonplace, especially by the corporations that provide these models in the first place. We also cannot trust even the most well-intentioned ‘independent organization’ to take care of its verification.”
If I’m understanding Farough correctly — and understanding what FSF has stood for since its beginning in the 1980s — he’s implying that any kill switch should only be able to be activated by the person using the software. That’s Software Freedom 101. If that’s not what he means, I believe that’s what he should mean.
He does sorta spell this out near the end of the blog, when he urges the Government Operations Agency to “write their recommendation to the governor in ways that puts the freedom and dignity of the individual user first and foremost.”
Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux
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