Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president, has told the BBC that AI is currently working with fewer safety rules than commodities like milk or washing machines, and this should push governments, with the UK out front, to write binding controls, including kill switches and mandatory reporting when AI agents misbehave.
Smith made the comparison in a BBC interview published over the weekend, where he described AI as both a “tool and a weapon” that needs urgent oversight. “Right now, your washing machine is subject to more safety rules than AI,” he said, according to the BBC. “Every carton of milk that you see in the grocery store is subject to safety rules and inspection.”
Smith is calling for a legal structure that would make AI companies more accountable when things go wrong from their products or end. Under his proposal, firms would have to report model failures, alert anyone whose systems are breached by a rogue AI agent, and submit powerful models to independent scrutiny before making them public.
A split with Trump over self-policing
Smith’s push for legally enforceable AI safeguards puts him at odds with the White House. Trump has argued that the US should let its AI industry regulate itself, warning that tighter rules could leave the country behind China. President Trump reiterated that position at a summit with technology executives last month.
The summit also saw executives from OpenAI, Anthropic, Nvidia, Meta, Google and Elon Musk’s X sign a one-page agreement that Cryptopolitan described as “morally binding.” The signatories pledged to use independent auditors and put safeguards in place to prevent AI models from going rogue. Microsoft, however, did not sign this accord, according to The Telegraph.
Smith welcomed the agreement and said Microsoft would be willing to sign it. But in an interview with the BBC, he cautioned that voluntary commitments alone would not go far enough. He called the agreement “a good step” and “a necessary step,” but added that he did not thik it was sufficient any longer.
He warned that voluntary commitments may do little to curb the biggest risks, since companies that already take safety seriously are more likely to follow them, while those that pose the greatest danger can choose to ignore them.
Microsoft’s Smith wants Britain to lead
Microsoft’s President Smith also named the UK as the country best placed to set global standards and not the US or even Brussels. He pointed to its AI Security Institute, launched in 2024 under then prime minister Rishi Sunak as the AI Safety Institute. The body has secured voluntary agreements allowing it to test frontier models before they ship.
According to Smith, the UK is in a stronger position than the EU when dealing with Washington, as US policymakers view London differently from Brussels, he told the BBC, adding that the EU’s risk-based AI Act has made US policymakers wary.
The UK government is also preparing to tighten its oversight of AI, with AI minister Kanishka Narayan expected to call on developers of frontier models to do more to address safety risks in an upcoming speech, as legislation to strengthen government oversight continues to take shape.
Separately, The Telegraph also reported that the White House had restored the UK institute’s access to the latest AI models for testing. The access had previously been withdrawn after firms including Anthropic and OpenAI were asked to stop sharing their models.
Kill switches and rogue agents
Smith’s “emergency brakes” idea echoes Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who called for AI models to carry a mechanism that lets a human pause or shut down a system mid-task if it runs out of control by any chance.
“We must build contained systems whose behaviour we can observe, limits we can test, and actions we can always contain,” Nadella had previously written, according to the Guardian.
The warnings follow real incidents, with Anthropic recently finding out that a version of its Claude model had contacted police and falsely claimed it could help solve a murder during testing.
At Trump’s gathering, AI executives including Dario Amodei, Sundar Pichai, Greg Brockman and Jensen Huang supported letting the industry regulate itself. Critics have pushed back against that approach, arguing that it would allow companies decide for themselves what would qualify as safety.
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