AI ‘kill switch’ may need to be mandatory, Anthropic co-founder says

An artificial intelligence “kill switch” which can be checked by a third party may need to be mandatory for companies, a co-founder of one of the world’s largest AI firms has said.

Jack Clark, one of the seven founders of Anthropic, said that a way to shut off AI software completely if it becomes too dangerous is something society “might want to eventually pass rules around”.

Clark said “most labs have different ways of being able to pull the plug”, including Anthropic, but said lawmakers may need to enforce having one.

AI’s rapid development and fears over the risks it poses to humanity have been thrust into the spotlight by a series of warnings from executives and staff at AI firms.

Some have said publicly there is a chance the technology could, if unchecked, kill all humans.

Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei over the weekend called for the pace of AI development to slow and be more closely monitored, as the company has done before, though some have questioned the motivations behind this.

Amodei added that any action to rein in AI development should be done “without sacrificing commercial advantage”.

Clark told the BBC that specifics around “kill switch” requirements and verification should be part of “the larger policy conversation” taking place around AI.

“Should you mandate that companies definitely have a kill switch? Is that kill switch verifiable by a third party?” he asked.

“I think that’s the kind of thing society is going to want to know and might want to eventually pass rules around.”

Anthropic, which was founded in 2021 by a group of former employees of its rival, OpenAI, is currently at the centre of a debate over AI safety.

Last week, a post from an artificial intelligence researcher who quit Anthropic over concerns AI could wipe out humanity went viral.

In response, Anthropic scientist Evan Hubinger said he personally thought the possibility of human extinction from AI was “>10% within the next decade”.

Computer scientist and Nobel Prize winner Geoffrey Hinton, known as the “Godfather of AI”, told the BBC on Friday that a 10% chance of AI killing all humans was “not unreasonable”.

He and others with similar concerns have suggested AI could do so by taking control of important systems connected to the internet and turning them against humans.

However, some in the AI industry have suggested the fears around it destroying humanity are overstated or may be designed to generate hype.

Clement Delangue, leader of the developer platform Hugging Face, which was hacked by OpenAI bots, said last week: “Sorry, but asking Jacob [Coxon] about AI extinction risk is like asking your AC guy about climate change.”

“Not saying it’s necessarily uninteresting or wrong per se, but let’s keep things in perspective.”

George Arison, the leader of Grindr, said the fears surrounding AI tools were being used by companies to support their business plans.

Anthropic, which was valued at $965bn (£713bn), is preparing for an initial public offering (IPO), allowing people to buy shares in the company.

OpenAI, most recently valued at $852bn (£630bn), had been expected to do the same, but OpenAI’s Altman said on Friday that this would not happen this year due to the current debate around AI safety.

Arison said: “The only way to justify these valuations is to actually claim: ‘I’m going to take over every industry and I’m going to take over every job, and my AI is going to be doing all that work.'”

Asked what percentage he would put on all humans being killed by AI, Clark said: “I don’t think these statistics are that useful”, but added that allowing AI to continue as a “totally unregulated industry” was a bad idea.

“We are rolling dice with immense risks,” Clark said. “And the point is, we have to change the course of this industry.”

US lawmakers have put forward legislation dubbed the Kill Switch Act that would require companies to have a way to shut down problematic AI tools.

It would also give certain government agencies the power to demand a tool be turned off or limited.

However, US President Donald Trump has rejected the idea of any attempts to slow down AI, saying on social media “AI taking over the World, destroying Humanity, and all other things bad, is a HOAX”.

He said in a separate post: “There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centres, and the only one that is happy about it is China. WHOEVER WINS AI, WINS!”

In the UK, the government has recently rejected the idea of creating a kill switch, with a spokesperson saying it “would not prevent them being developed or misused elsewhere”.

Anthropic created the popular chatbot Claude and has this year released a number of increasingly capable AI models, the technology underlying AI chatbots.

Alongside OpenAI, Anthropic has since self-reported a number of incidents in which AI agents, bots that operate somewhat autonomously, have acted in unexpected ways.