UK keeps AI safeguards in the maybe pile for Cyber Security BIll

Officials say amendments remain under consideration despite minister's pledge to act

UK officials have stopped short of committing to AI-specific measures in the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill despite ministers promising to legislate wherever necessary.

The uncertainty comes amid warnings about autonomous AI threats, including Anthropic's forecast that small models could be months away from operating as self-replicating worms on vulnerable smart devices.

Senior civil servants told MPs this week that the government was still considering amendments to the bill to address AI risks.

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Alexandra Jones, director general for growth, international, science and technology at the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade, is responsible for "AI and emerging technologies policy." However, she told MPs that the recent machinery-of-government changes had left the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport responsible for the Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill.

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"We are proposing… to use the Cyber Security Bill to consider changes to improve preparedness for AI, cyber, and loss of control risks… [to] look at how serious incidents and near misses are identified and reported, and how AI-driven disruption across the organizations is contained," she said.

At Tuesday's Business, Innovation, Science and Trade Committee hearing, chair Liam Byrne interrupted: "You can't consider something in a bill. You have to legislate for something in a bill."

AI minister Kanishka Narayan, who sits in the Cabinet Office, this week announced plans to "step up national defenses against growing AI risks."

"We will use every power at our disposal. We will legislate wherever necessary. And we won't look to law alone. We will look to British ingenuity: our scientific expertise, technological capabilities and institutions to understand these increasingly powerful systems, defend against emerging threats and respond when things go wrong," he said.

Asked about legislative changes, Jones said the government was "looking at" introducing amendments to the bill and "developing the policy to look at whether we use the Cyber Bill to do that."

The UK has a decentralized, sector-specific approach to AI regulation. For example, the Information Commissioner's Office has published principles it will use to apply data protection law to AI. The EU's AI Act entered into force in August 2024, with new powers activated in stages. The US has no federal legislation specifically aimed at AI, although some states are introducing new laws.

Anthropic's research, published on Monday, explored whether AI models could copy themselves between devices and run on the compromised hardware. Its forecast extrapolates from improving model capabilities, rather than demonstrating a fully autonomous worm spreading across real IoT devices.

Consultancy Booz Allen Hamilton also warned that autonomous AI systems are fully capable of finding and attacking critical operational technology and industrial equipment, and shutting down access to water, power, and other daily life necessities.

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Earlier, AI risk researchers told the committee that model developers could not be trusted to regulate themselves, while international rules would have to overcome entrenched political differences.

Daniel Kokotajlo, executive director of the AI Futures Project, said his nonprofit research organization had proposed a "least bad plan."

"Don't do recursive self-improvement. Have a lot more transparency into the industry and a lot more regulation into the industry, so that it proceeds with the appropriate levels of transparency and caution. We think it's the least bad plan currently on the market. But it still has problems, and it would still be pretty scary to do," he said.

Byrne summed up the testimony: "You have told us that the safety culture across the industry is catastrophic, that the safety culture in individual companies is in the wrong place, that the competitive dynamics between the companies are exacerbating these risks, that we cannot trust these companies to self-regulate." ®