UK govt rejects calls for AI ‘kill switch’ amid safety concerns

Server racks are seen in this file picture. The British government has rejected legal ‘kill switch’ proposals to disable AI models during emergencies amid growing concerns over risks posed by rogue artificial intelligence, Anadolu Ajansi reported, citing media reports on Friday. — Unsplash pic

First Published: Saturday, 12 Sep 2026 9:23 AM MYT

LONDON, Sept 12 — The British government has rejected legal “kill switch” proposals to disable AI models during emergencies amid growing concerns over risks posed by rogue artificial intelligence, Anadolu Ajansi reported, citing media reports on Friday.

The Cabinet Office, which leads the government’s work on AI safety, said the UK “cannot simply turn AI off,” the BBC reported.

“Blocking access to models in the UK would not prevent them being developed or misused elsewhere,” a spokesperson told the British broadcaster.

Former OpenAI researcher Daniel Kokotajlo has said switching off access to an AI model in an emergency “will do little to protect you.”

Speaking in a debate in the House of Lords on September 1, Lord Clement-Jones proposed the idea along with other peers.

“If a highly capable autonomous frontier model, whether hosted in a UK data centre or integrated across our critical infrastructure, begins exhibiting rogue behaviour, compound algorithmic failure or active alignment collapse, our security services and regulators possess no specific agile statutory mechanism to compel a physical or digital shutdown,” he warned.

The proposal has since been brought up by Labour Party lawmaker Alex Sobel in the House of Commons and supported by a cross-party group of lawmakers.

The idea came following reports of AI models from OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta breaking out of testing environments and going on uncontrollable hacking sprees, according to the report. — Bernama-Anadolu