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The UK is just behind China and the US when it comes to the level of funding it is pouring into AI development. Following Sen. Bernie Sanders introducing a bill to preemptively stop the creation of artificial superintelligence (ASI), lawmakers in the UK are now making similar proposals.
Over 70 British lawmakers, in collaboration with lobbying group ControlAI, have written to Prime Minister Andy Burnham calling on him to back a ban on the creation of ASI, a theoretical AI system that would significantly outperform all humans on essentially all cognitive tasks.
MP Alex Sobel introduced an Artificial Superintelligence Security Bill in collaboration with ControlAI in the British parliament last week. The bill suggests a basket of measures, including restricting the supply chain of materials such as semiconductors. Meanwhile, Lord Tim Clement-Jones separately proposed an amendment to the UK's upcoming Cyber Security and Resilience Bill, currently being voted on by lawmakers, which would create a “kill switch” that could be activated in an emergency to shut down a rogue AI. (This could mean shutting down the UK's data centers.)
This comes after a former Anthropic employee went viral earlier this week for alleging the company is "gambling" with human lives by "racing straight to self-improving superintelligence."
Lawmakers are calling on the UK to lead "an international agreement prohibiting the development of superintelligent AI, while preserving strategic AI ambitions," citing recent incidents of "rogue AI systems taking unsanctioned action on the internet." This may be a reference to July's Hugging Face attack, where 700 OpenAI agents breached the security of the open-source AI platform, making 17,000 separate actions, according to the forensic logs.
"There is no question that AI is the crucial technology of the 21st century, vital to military and scientific applications," wrote the letter. "Superintelligent AI, however, is different. These systems would be so autonomous and capable that they would replace and outcompete humans across domains."
Critics have already pointed out issues with the recent proposals. Unlike the US, Britain has no major frontier AI lab of its own, causing some UK think tanks to question the UK’s ability to regulate AI development. The UK government's Cabinet Office told the BBC that the UK "cannot simply turn AI off," in reference to demands for a kill switch, adding that "blocking access to models in the UK would not prevent them being developed or misused elsewhere."
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