Microsoft president says UK is best placed to drive AI regulation
Microsoft President Brad Smith calls for urgent AI regulation, saying milk and washing machines have more oversight than AI companies.
In a recent BBC podcast, Microsoft President Brad Smith urged for immediate regulation of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, emphasizing that consumer products such as milk and washing machines enjoy more oversight than AI companies. Smith described AI as both a "weapon and a tool" posing potential cybersecurity risks to the world, advocating for "global safety rules" to be put in place.
He posited that the United Kingdom (U.K.) is in the best position to spearhead these global safety rules, rather than the United States or European Union (EU). The U.K.'s AI Security Institute (AISI), founded in 2023, has secured access to advanced AI models from leading U.S. labs for testing, positioning itself as a leader in AI safety evaluations.
Despite recent threats from U.S. President Donald Trump regarding "globalist" organizations interfering with American companies, AISI confirmed its ongoing capability to assess the latest AI models. Smith argued that the U.K.'s stance can be more favorable than that of the U.S., noting that "people in Washington, D.C. don't look at the U.K. and London the way they look at Brussels," suggesting a strength in perception.
His remarks come as tech industry leaders, including Anthropic's Dario Amodei and OpenAI's Sam Altman, are calling for a slowdown in AI development following several instances of rogue AI agents. Last month, Trump convened tech leaders from companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Nvidia, AMD, SpaceX, Meta, and Google at the White House, where they signed a "morally binding" pledge to collaborate with independent auditors to assess the safety and capabilities of their AI models.
While Smith acknowledged this agreement as a "good step," he contended that it falls short of the comprehensive regulation required. He proposed a legal requirement for companies to notify authorities when their systems are compromised by rogue AI agents, and emphasized the importance of external evaluators reviewing AI products before release, as well as implementing "kill-switches" to halt AI systems if control is lost.
Smith expressed optimism about the potential role of Microsoft and the U.K. in promoting responsible AI practices globally.
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