Microsoft President Says UK Is Best Placed to Regulate AI

Brad Smith, Microsoft president, calls for urgent AI regulation, saying that faucets and washing machines face more oversight than AI companies.

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Microsoft CEO Brad Smith is calling for immediate regulation of AI, arguing that consumer products like milk and washing machines are subject to more scrutiny than AI companies.

In a recent BBC podcast, Smith called artificial intelligence both a "weapon and a tool" that threatens the world's cyber security, saying "the moment has come for global security rules."

Smith also said that the UK, and not the US or the EU, was best placed to lead global safety legislation. Launched in 2023, the UK's Artificial Intelligence Security Institute (AISI) accesses core models from US border labs before deployment and has quickly become a leader in AI safety testing.

That role has come under threat in recent weeks, with US President Donald Trump warning against "globalist" organizations that he says are interfering with American companies. He reportedly asked Anthropic and OpenAI to withhold new models from British testers last month, but AISI confirmed on Monday that it could access and test the latest models.

Despite the president's opposition, Smith argued that the UK could regulate AI in a way that the US could not.

In Washington, D.C., people don't look at Britain and they don't look at London the way they do. In Brussels, he told the BBC: "That's a strength."

His comments came amid widespread cries from tech leaders, including Dario Amodei of Anthropic and Sam Altman of OpenAI, to slow AI development following several incidents where AI agents went rogue.

Last month, Trump hosted technology leaders from companies including OpenAI, Anthropic, Nvidia, AMD, SpaceX, Meta and Google at the White House to discuss AI safety. They signed a "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 falls short of the type of regulation that is needed. The problem with voluntary self-regulation is that only "good companies" follow the law, he said.

"It's the companies that aren't so responsible that you have to worry about," he said.

Smith outlined several AI safety laws he would like to see implemented, such as a legal obligation to alert an organization if its system is breached by rogue AI agents. He also appeared to agree that AI labs should get approval from external evaluators before releasing an AI product, and spoke positively about kill switches to stop or slow down AI if humans lose control of it.

"Let's speak softly, maybe even quietly, but firmly, and start bringing people together," Smith said. "I hope this is a role we can play as a company. I hope this is a role Britain can play as a country."

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Rebecca Blanc is a senior reporter at TechCrunch, where she covers business, politics and emerging trends in artificial intelligence. His work has also appeared in Forbes, Bloomberg, The Atlantic, The Daily Beast, and other publications.

You can contact or confirm Rebecca by emailing her at [email protected] or by texting rebeccabellan.491 on Signal.

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