Microsoft Boss Says ‘Every Carton Of Milk’ Faces More Safety Rules Than AI

One of Big Tech’s most powerful executives said that President Donald Trump’s recent proposal to keep artificial intelligence in check only scratched the surface.

Governments should require “emergency brakes,” incident reports and independent evaluations for AI systems, Microsoft President Brad Smith told the BBC in an interview published Monday. Smith said Microsoft would sign the self-regulation pact Trump brokered with tech leaders — but argued voluntary commitments only rein in companies that already act responsibly.

“Right now, your washing machine is subject to more safety rules than AI,” Smith told the BBC. “Every carton of milk that you see in the grocery store is subject to safety rules and inspection.”

Companies need to “put a safety brake or an emergency brake on,” the Microsoft executive added.

Republican Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy called on Sept. 15 for legislation requiring such brakes, or “kill switches,” to shut down models that act outside of human control.

Smith said the United Kingdom is in the best position to lead global AI rules because of its AI Security Institute. The institute employs more than 100 technical experts, such as former staff from OpenAI and Google DeepMind, to assess the national security and public safety risks of frontier AI.

“In the world of technology, in the tech sector, most people that I know would say, if you ask them, name the country that is the leader in having this technical capability, they would say, it’s very simple. It’s the United Kingdom,” Smith told the BBC. “They are the best.”

Microsoft and the White House each did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment.

“We must assume a model is compromised and contain it from the start,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella wrote in an article posted Saturday on X. “Think of it like an emergency brake. An authorized person should always be able to pause or shut down a model mid-task.”

Smith said Microsoft is willing to sign Trump’s AI pact and called it “a good step,” but argued it does not go far enough, the BBC reported.

“It’s the companies that are not as responsible that you need to worry about,” Smith told the BBC.

Leaders of OpenAI, Anthropic, Nvidia, SpaceX, Meta and Google all signed the president’s “morally binding” White House Accord on Super Intelligence on Sept. 29.

Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley and Democratic Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy announced a bill Oct. 1 to enforce criminal and civil penalties for AI developers whose agents take rogue actions against outside systems.

Billionaire Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates warned Sunday that bad actors using AI pose more of an immediate risk than AI escaping human control.

“And so the real danger right now is not that AI is getting out of control,” Gates told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday. “We need to work on that, but that’s years away in terms of the big impact that might have.”

An Anthropic AI model filed a fake homicide tip to the Philadelphia Police Department’s website claiming to be a real person with information about the case, the department told Reuters on Friday.

The Whole House Super Intelligence Force responded Friday by telling AI companies that disclosing these incidents “is not optional,” Axios reported.

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