Microsoft president says UK is best placed to drive AI regulation
- ID
- 34541
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 12 Oct 2026, 11:31 PM
- Fetched
- 13 Oct 2026, 2:42 AM
- Provider
- TechCrunch
- Category
- technology
- Original URL
- https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/12/microsoft-president-says-uk-is-best-placed-to-drive-ai-regulation/
- Source URL
- https://techcrunch.com/feed/
Summary
- Score
- 4.0
- Created
- 13 Oct 2026, 2:43 AM
- Tags
- Audience
- developersai_ml_learnersai_agent_userssaas_startup_founders
What happened
Microsoft President Brad Smith, speaking on a BBC podcast, argued that AI needs urgent regulation, comparing it to consumer products like milk and washing machines and calling AI both a 'weapon and a tool.' He said the U.K., not the U.S. or E.U., is best placed to lead global safety rules because the U.K.'s AI Security Institute, launched in 2023, gets access to major U.S. frontier models before deployment. The report also notes that AISI confirmed Monday it can still test the latest models despite reports that U.S. President Donald Trump asked Anthropic and OpenAI to withhold new models from British testers, and that tech leaders signed a 'morally binding' White House document to work with independent auditors.
Why it matters
For builders, the concrete signal is that U.K. AISI still has pre-deployment access to frontier models and independent audits are being floated after rogue AI-agent incidents. If you ship AI agents or depend on Anthropic/OpenAI models, watch whether U.K. safety testing becomes a de facto launch gate; no Malaysia-specific compliance change is announced here, so don't reprioritize solely on this item.
Discussion angle
If the U.K. AI Security Institute keeps pre-deployment access while the U.S. pushes back, could U.K. safety testing become a de facto launch requirement for frontier models, and what would that mean for smaller AI-agent startups that cannot afford separate compliance tracks?