World Post
Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella has said that all artificial intelligence models should be treated as “compromised” and potentially dangerous. In a lengthy post to X about AI safety, the tech boss said that containment of rogue models will only be possible if safeguards are built-in from the start. His comments came after Microsoft President Brad Smith called for global safety rules for the technology, claiming that milk and washing machines are currently more regulated than AI.
“We must assume a model is compromised and contain it from the start,” Mr Nadella wrote . “Think of it like an emergency brake. Any authorised person should always be able to pause or shut down a model mid-task.
More advanced models will require more advanced containment technologies that we need to standardise on.” He added that AI companies need to take an engineering approach to safety and that models should be separated from the mechanisms that govern its actions. Mr Nadella referred to the technology as “super intelligence”, following an executive order from US President Donald Trump to no longer refer to it as artificial intelligence. He appeared to distance himself from Trump’s call for AI firms to regulate themselves, saying that stricter industry standards are needed to prevent bad outcomes.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Dell Techologies CEO Michael Dell, AMD CEO Lisa Su, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, entrepreneur Sergey Brin and US President Donald Trump on 8 October, 2026 (AFP/Getty) A day before Mr Nadella’s post, Brad Smith told ITV News that we need to act urgently to address the greatest risks associated with AI. He warned that the sector is currently subject to less regulation than everyday consumer products due to the pace at which it is developing. “Right now AI is less regulated than your washing machine,” Mr Smith said.
“It is less regulated than a carton of milk. We all go into the grocery store, we look at the milk, we know it's safe. That is the kind of trust we need to build for AI as well.
"As these technologies spread more broadly, we either address this now, we either put the kind of safeguards in place that we need, or we run a greater risk." In a separate interview with the BBC, Mr Smith repeated Mr Nadella’s calls for “emergency brakes” to stop out-of-control AI systems. It follows broader industry calls from the likes of Google DeepMind and Anthropic to develop a “kill switch” for AI. The idea has gained traction in recent weeks following a string of cyber attacks and other incidents involving frontier AI models.
Source: The Independent
