Should AI be formally recognized as a national and global security threat? In London, politicians increasingly think so 

A frog does not know it is being boiled until it is too late. Lawmakers in London feel the same about artificial general intelligence—the next chapter of the 21st century technology revolution which could be as little as three years away.  

A campaign for government recognition that such non-human “superintelligence” should be formally considered a threat to national and global security is backed by more than 125 U.K. lawmakers. The philosopher, historian and author of mega-selling books, Yuval Noah Harari, has given the campaign his personal endorsement. 

Luciana Berger, the former Labour MP and now a member of the upper legislative house in the U.K., the House of Lords, is leading the charge via the campaign group ControlAI. “On a domestic level, we are being left behind when it comes to AI development,” she told me. “As a country, the U.K. is completely reliant on American and Chinese AI models. We are a country renowned for our research and development, this needs to be right at the top of our agenda in order to maintain even a tiny stake in AI development.” 

Berger speaks for many political leaders who are becoming increasingly trepidatious about the development of AI. Fears over digital sovereignty are growing and at present there are few checks and balances for a new technology that Demis Hassabis of DeepMind has described as........

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