Microsoft President Says UK Is Best Placed to Lead AI Regulation
Microsoft President Brad Smith has told the BBC that global AI safety rules are urgently needed and that the UK is best positioned to lead them. He argues voluntary self-regulation is not enough.
Microsoft President Brad Smith, a senior executive at the US technology giant, has called for urgent regulation of artificial intelligence (AI) in a BBC podcast. He said the "moment has arrived" for global safety rules and that the United Kingdom, rather than the US or the European Union, is best placed to lead the effort. The issue matters because oversight of AI developers remains weak while the technology is raising cybersecurity risks.
Smith argued that everyday products such as milk and washing machines face more oversight than the companies building AI. He described AI as both a "weapon and a tool" that is putting the world's cybersecurity at risk.
The role of a British institution
The UK's AI Security Institute (AISI), launched in 2023, gets access to major models from leading US labs before they are deployed and has quickly become a leader in AI safety testing. That role has been under threat in recent weeks: US President Donald Trump has warned against "globalist" organizations that he claims interfere with American companies. Last month he reportedly asked Anthropic and OpenAI to withhold new models from British testers. On Monday, AISI confirmed it can still access and test the latest models.
Smith said the UK can regulate AI in ways the US cannot: in Washington, he said, people do not view London the way they view Brussels, and "that's a strength."
Why voluntary rules fall short
Smith's remarks come as tech leaders, including Anthropic's Dario Amodei and OpenAI's Sam Altman, call for slowing AI development after several incidents in which AI agents went rogue. Last month Trump hosted executives from companies including OpenAI, Anthropic, Nvidia, AMD, SpaceX, Meta and Google at the White House, where they signed a "morally binding" document committing to work with "independent auditors" to assess the safety and capabilities of their models. Smith called it a "good step" but said it stops short of the necessary regulation. The "good companies" will comply, he said; the concern is the less responsible ones.
He outlined rules he would like to see, including a legal obligation to alert an organization if rogue AI agents breach its systems. He also appears to favor approval from outside evaluators before an AI product is released, and spoke positively about kill-switches that could pause or slow AI if humans lose control of it.
