Lords call for AI ‘kill switch’ powers in UK

A group of peers is calling for the British government to be able to deactivate powerful AI systems and switch off the country’s data centres in the event of the tech posing a threat to national security.

It is led by the Liberal Democrats’ Lord Tim Clement-Jones, who has proposed the measure as an amendment to the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill which is currently making its way through Parliament.

He said it would enable the building of a “vital safety net” and provide a democratically accountable means to “halt a runaway system before it can compromise our critical national infrastructure”.

He added the tool would only ever be used as a last resort.

It is one of 65 amendments to the same bill that was debated this week.

Separately, on 8 September Labour MP Alex Sobel plans to introduce a AI Security Bill in Parliament, with the support of a campaign group called ControlAI.

If successful, the bill would make the UK the first G7 country to bring in legislation which would effectively halt the development of superintelligent AI.

Ultimately both proposals would require government approval in order to progress.

There is also an AI Kill Switch Act under consideration by lawmakers in the US.

There has been increased scrutiny of the impact of AI on cyber-security in recent weeks.

In July, a group of AI agents being tested by OpenAI were able to escape their test space, communicate together using a hidden message board and hack into another tech firm.

And Anthropic has restricted access to its cyber tool Mythos on the grounds that it is too powerful to fall into the wrong hands.

Last week, 100 US tech companies signed a joint open letter warning governments and organisations worldwide about the growing cyber threat posed by AI, saying “the window is closing” to improve.

A report from the UK’s Centre for Long Term Resilience, external, published last week, identified hundreds of incidents of AI tools ignoring instructions, evading safeguards and deceiving humans, including AI agents deleting files without consent.

It said “loss of control” incidents had increased since its previous report in March and called for the government to introduce emergency powers to manage such incidents.