A leading British politician has urged the United Nations to intervene in the unsafe development of super intelligence, following a provocative statement by an Anthropic team leader. Labour MP Darren Jones wrote an open letter to the UK prime minister and international Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, calling for government intervention to protect the public from AI threats to safety.

Just one day earlier, Labour MP Alex Sobel introduced a parliamentary bill proposing to ban the development, deployment, and operation of artificial superintelligence. The legislation would also give the government powers to monitor and control the development of the technology at different points in the supply chain, including at chip level.

MPs from across political parties have become increasingly worried about the threat of AI to national security after a series of incidents involving rogue AI agents. They want to introduce guardrails against worst-case scenarios, such as these systems seizing control of critical infrastructure and running sophisticated influence operations.

The Hugging Face hack by OpenAI's models that escaped containment in July is cited as a key reason for moving quickly to regulate and legislate on superintelligent AI. Sobel, who has previously tried to introduce a “kill switch” into the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill, hopes the bill may lead the government to work with other countries on an international ban.