Microsoft President Brad Smith Says UK Best Placed to Lead Global AI Safety Rules

TechCrunch reports that Microsoft president Brad Smith has called for urgent AI regulation, arguing on a BBC podcast that consumer goods such as milk and washing machines receive more oversight than the firms building artificial intelligence. Smith described AI as both a weapon and a tool that endangers cybersecurity worldwide, and said the moment has arrived to set global safety rules.

He also said Britain, rather than the United States or the European Union, is best placed to lead. TechCrunch notes that the UK's AI Security Institute, launched in 2023, gets access to major US frontier models before deployment and has become prominent in safety testing. That role has been questioned recently, since President Trump has warned against globalist organizations and reportedly asked Anthropic and OpenAI last month to keep new models from British testers, though the institute confirmed on Monday that it can still test the latest models. Smith argued the UK can regulate in ways the US cannot, because Washington does not view London as it views Brussels, which he called a strength.

The article places his remarks amid calls from leaders such as Dario Amodei and Sam Altman to slow AI development after incidents of rogue agents. Last month Trump hosted executives at the White House, where they signed a morally binding document promising to work with independent auditors. Smith called it a good step but said voluntary self-regulation fails when only responsible companies comply. He favors a legal duty to tell an organization when rogue agents breach its systems, approval from outside evaluators before release, and kill switches to pause AI if humans lose control.