Microsoft president says UK is best placed to drive AI regulation

Microsoft President Brad Smith is calling for urgent regulation of AI, and his argument is that consumer products like milk and washing machines have more oversight than the companies building artificial intelligence.

On a recent BBC podcast, Smith called AI both a “weapon and a tool” that is putting the world’s cybersecurity at risk, and said the “moment has arrived” to institute global safety rules.

Smith also said the U.K., and not the U.S. or European Union, is best placed to lead on global safety rules. Britain’s AI Security Institute, launched in 2023, receives access to major models from U.S. frontier labs before they are deployed and has quickly become a leader in AI safety testing. 

That role has been under threat in recent weeks, with U.S. President Donald Trump warning against “globalist” organizations, which he claims are interfering with American companies. Last month, he reportedly asked Anthropic and OpenAI to withhold new models from British testers, but AISI confirmed on Monday that it is able to access and test the latest models. 

Despite the president’s pushback, however, Smith argued the U.K. can regulate AI in ways that the U.S. cannot. 

“In Washington, D.C., people don’t look at the U.K. and they don’t look at London the way they look at Brussels,” he told the BBC. “That’s a strength.”

His comments come amid rallying cries from tech leaders, including Anthropic’s Dario Amodei and OpenAI’s Sam Altman, to slow the pace of AI development in the wake of several incidents where AI agents went rogue.

Last month, Trump hosted tech leaders of companies including OpenAI, Anthropic, Nvidia, AMD, SpaceX, Meta and Google at the White House to discuss AI safety. They signed a “morally binding” document in which they agreed to work with “independent auditors” to assess the safety and capabilities of their AI models. 

Smith says the document is a “good step,” but it stops short of the type of regulation that is necessary. The problem with voluntary self-regulation, he said, is that the “good companies” will comply. 

“It’s the companies that are not as responsible that you need to worry about,” he said.

Smith outlined several AI safety rules he’d like to see put into place, like a legal obligation to alert an organization if its system was breached by rogue AI agents. He also appears to be in favor of AI labs getting the approval of outside evaluators before an AI product is released, and spoke positively about kill-switches to pause or slow down AI if humans lose control of it. 

“Let’s speak calmly, maybe even softly, but firmly, and start to bring people together,” Smith said. “I hope that’s the role we can play as a company. I hope that’s the role the U.K. can play as a country.”

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