Britain will be better protected from the risks posed by increasingly powerful AI under a suite of measures announced today.
The government said it will put frontier AI to work strengthening cyber defences, examine stronger legal protections, and prepare for serious incidents involving autonomous AI systems.
The move, announced on Monday 12 October, builds on two pilots that have already identified and fixed more than 1,000 potential cyber vulnerabilities across government systems and helped detect threats. Extending the programme will help protect public services and support longer-term adoption across the public sector.
Speaking at Imperial College London’s science and tech incubator, Base One, AI Minister Kanishka Narayan called for a whole-society approach to resilience to ensure AI continues to serve British interests.
He warned that as frontier systems become more capable of acting autonomously, the consequences of failures or malicious use could become far more serious.
“I want Britain to become one of the hardest countries in the world to attack using artificial intelligence,” Narayan said. “We will use every power at our disposal. We will legislate wherever necessary.”
He added: “To the companies developing the world’s most powerful AI systems, my message is: Listen when your scientists warn of serious dangers. Investigate unexpected behaviour. And if you cannot adequately control the risks, do not release the system.”
Cyber Minister Liz Lloyd said: “As cyber incidents continue to disrupt globally, it’s now business-critical to ensure you’re on the front-foot when it comes to cyber security.”
Alongside the pilots, the government will explore strengthening parts of the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill and the wider regime to better protect essential services such as hospitals and utilities from AI-related risk, including loss-of-control risk where autonomous systems evade human oversight.
Work is underway with the National Cyber Security Centre and the AI Security Institute on how to respond to incidents involving AI agents that can perform complex tasks with little supervision. Ministers said such incidents could unfold faster and more widely than other major incidents.
The government will also look at how near-miss incidents can be identified and reported so lessons are learned quickly.
Scientists at the UK’s AI Security Institute are now conducting rigorous evaluations of the latest generation of advanced models, following work with leading developers and the US Government.
Ministers said the emerging field of AI verification — checking claims about how systems were developed, tested and assessed — will be important, with more details on UK support to be set out in coming months.
The measures are being spearheaded by the Prime Minister’s AI Taskforce, with AI set to be at the heart of the UK’s G20 Presidency next year.
