Big Boss Interview
Microsoft President: Britain Should Write World’s AI Rules
Artificial intelligence is advancing faster than the safeguards around it, and industry self-regulation is “not sufficient any longer”. That is president of Microsoft. Speaking to Will Bain on BBC’s Big Boss Interview, Mr Smith said the world should worry more about AI safety than about any previous generation of digital technology in his 33 years in the industry
Microsoft is one of the world’s largest AI developers and an investor in OpenAI. Mr Smith’s comments set out a position that goes beyond the “tremendous self-regulation” praised in a recent White House AI accord.
“Right now I’d argue that AI is moving forward faster than the speed of safety,” Mr Smith said. “That’s not good for the protection of the public. It’s not even good for the industry itself.”
Mr Smith set out three measures. The first is a “safety brake or emergency brake” on any AI system controlling autonomous devices or critical infrastructure, an idea often described as a kill switch. He said it should sit in the companies running the models and in the cloud infrastructure they run on. The second is a legal obligation to report incidents: if AI agents “break loose” and break into systems, the victims should be told, as they are after a data breach.
The third measure, which he called the biggest and most important, is whether government evaluators should have to sign off frontier models before release. “Just remember, right now, your washing machine is subject to more safety rules than AI,” he said. He added that cartons of milk and passenger aircraft are subject to inspection and certification.
He said the UK was the country best placed to lead. The AI Security Institute, he said, has the strongest technical capability in the world to test AI models: “It’s the United Kingdom. They are the best.” In his account, the US began building similar capability and then slowed down. Asked about Anthropic declining UK testing of one of its models, he said the question now was when developers should be required to satisfy a government regulator that a product is safe before it is released. He described Britain as “a bridge across the Atlantic and across the English Channel”. He also noted that in Washington, people “don’t look at London the same way they look at Brussels”.
Mr Smith also responded to Vice President JD Vance, who had accused Microsoft of abusing the H-1B visa system more than any other US company. Mr Smith said the vice president’s staff “got the maths wrong”. He said about 80% of the company’s 6,000 visa applications were for existing employees, every green card applicant was already employed by Microsoft, and the company hired 9,000 Americans last year.
On data centres, he said the cost of new grid capacity “should not be the neighbours… it should be the industry itself”.
