Microsoft President Brad Smith says UK is best placed to drive global AI regulation

Microsoft President Brad Smith is calling for urgent regulation of AI, arguing that consumer products like milk and washing machines face more oversight than the companies building artificial intelligence, TechCrunch reported on October 12, 2026.

"A weapon and a tool"

On a recent BBC podcast, Smith described AI as both "a weapon and a tool" that is putting the world's cybersecurity at risk and said the "moment has arrived" to institute global safety rules. He argued that the UK, rather than the US or the European Union, is best placed to lead.

"In Washington, D.C., people don't look at the U.K. and they don't look at London the way they look at Brussels," Smith told the BBC. "That's a strength."

AISI's role and US pushback

Britain's AI Security Institute (AISI), launched in 2023, receives access to major models from US frontier labs before they are deployed and has become a leader in AI safety testing. That role has come under pressure: US President Donald Trump has warned against "globalist" organizations he claims are interfering with American companies, and last month he reportedly asked Anthropic and OpenAI to withhold new models from British testers. AISI confirmed on Monday that it is still able to access and test the latest models.

Voluntary pledges fall short

Last month, Trump hosted leaders from companies including OpenAI, Anthropic, Nvidia, AMD, SpaceX, Meta and Google at the White House, where they signed a "morally binding" document agreeing to work with "independent auditors" to assess the safety and capabilities of their models. Smith called the document a "good step" but said it stops short of the regulation that is needed, because with voluntary self-regulation only the "good companies" comply. "It's the companies that are not as responsible that you need to worry about," he said.

Rules Smith supports

• a legal obligation to alert an organization if its systems were breached by rogue AI agents;
• approval from outside evaluators before an AI product is released;
• kill switches to pause or slow down AI if humans lose control of it.

"Let's speak calmly, maybe even softly, but firmly, and start to bring people together," Smith said. "I hope that's the role we can play as a company. I hope that's the role the U.K. can play as a country."

His comments come amid calls from tech leaders, including Anthropic's Dario Amodei and OpenAI's Sam Altman, to slow the pace of AI development following several incidents in which AI agents went rogue.

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Source: TechCrunch.