Call for the UK to gain emergency powers over AI companies
Key Points
- The Centre for Long-Term Resilience (CLTR) has called on Burnham's government to introduce emergency powers over AI companies.
- These powers would allow the UK to reign in AI companies, compel them to share information, and restrict access to their products.
- The think tank highlighted the existential threat of unregulated AI and said the UK is positioned to be a global leader in mitigating the risks of the technology.
- Among the dangers cited by the report are the use of AI to create "mirror" organisms, which CLTR said have the potential to destroy humanity.
An AI think tank has called for the UK government to introduce emergency powers that allow it to reign in or compel information from AI companies.
The Centre for Long-Term Resilience (CLTR) has published a report that outlines the action Burnham’s government should take on mitigating AI risk, noting that the UK faces extreme threats as a result of frontier AI models.
“Biological risks top the National Risk Register and are worsening: AI tools are lowering the barrier to designing dangerous pathogens, while advances in biology are opening the door to novel dangers such as “mirror” organisms with potentially catastrophic results,” the think tank said.
“Loss of control of AI systems has moved from a hypothetical risk to a regular occurrence, with a 5x increase in incidents in the past year, and could pose an existential threat within a decade.”
The report called on Andy Burnham’s government to take bold action on AI regulation and treat AI as a national security issue.
The think tank stressed that dependence on foreign AI is a strategic vulnerability and recommended that the government encourage sovereign compute buildout in Britain and procure its own secure AI models as fallback options.
It also urged the government to introduce emergency powers that will give it a powerful level against AI companies operating in the company. These powers should include the ability to restrict access to AI services, as well as to compel information from AI giants and direct their response to security incidents.
With the globally recognised AI Security Institute already operating in the United Kingdom and a strong life sciences sector, CLTR argued that the country is well positioned to be a global leader in mitigating AI and its related biosecurity risks.
It said the UK should work to introduce mandatory independent third-party audits of automated AI research and development under international law. Additionally, CLTR said the behavioural instructions behind foreign models should be made transparent to the UK government before they are used in critical national infrastructure.
“The Government should require developers to disclose the values and behavioural instructions embedded in frontier models, such as model specifications and system prompts, and mandate independent auditing by AISI for hidden model loyalties before such systems are used in the public sector or critical national infrastructure,” CLTR said.
The think tank placed specific emphasis on the biosecurity risks of AI, highlighting the dangers of allow AI to develop “mirror” organisms, that it said have the potential to pose an existential threat to humanity and all life on Earth.
