Britain steps up national defences against growing AI risks

Britain will be better protected from the risks posed by increasingly powerful AI by a suite of measures, with the government urgently putting frontier AI to work strengthening cyber defences, examining stronger legal protections and preparing for serious incidents involving autonomous AI systems.

Announced today (Monday 12 October), the move builds on two pilots that have already helped identify and fix over a thousand potential cyber vulnerabilities across government systems, and detect potential cyber threats. Extending the programme will help protect the public services people rely on every day to reduce risk in the short-term, and will support longer-term adoption across the public sector.

Speaking at Imperial College London’s science and tech incubator, Base One, AI Minister Kanishka Narayan argued for a whole-society approach to resilience in the face of emerging AI risks, so that this technology continues to serve British people’s interests and boost our prosperity, as well as our security.

The Minister also warned that as frontier AI systems become increasingly powerful and capable of acting autonomously, the potential consequences of failures or malicious use could become far more serious. He will argue that Britain must act now to strengthen its defences and prepare for future serious incidents.