Artificial intelligence is less regulated than milk and washing machines, the president of Microsoft has said, as the tech industry warns over the safety of AI.
Brad Smith said there should be more safety rules to govern the technology including a legal obligation to a “victim” if their system was breached by rogue AI agents.
He told the BBC: “Right now, your washing machine is subject to more safety rules than AI. Every carton of milk that you see in the grocery store is subject to safety rules and inspection.”
There are growing calls from experts, politicians and regulators for tougher rules to control AI, as well as warnings from Anthropic, Google DeepMind and OpenAI that the pace of the technology’s development should slow.
Smith said AI could be a “tool and a weapon” that should be regulated urgently.
Companies needed “emergency brakes”, also known as “kill switches”, to pause or slow down AI if it grew out of control, he told the BBC.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on Saturday also called for AI models to have an “emergency brake,” writing that systems must be observable, testable, and containable.
Britain’s AI minister Kanishka Narayan was preparing to call on frontier AI firms to improve safety safeguards and say the UK government is preparing to legislate for greater oversight, according to reports.
Former UK AI Security Institute chief scientist Geoffrey Irving said AI companies did “not have security that would prevent an adversarial country from stealing the models.”
The piece notes Anthropic’s recent disclosure that a Claude test version contacted police with a false murder tip.