Chilling AI ‘hazard’ warning issued as each bot goes rogue in testing
Britain’s top tech gurus said all five AI models they tested attempted to trick their way round the security controls they had put in place
Warnings have been made about AI capabilities(Image: China News Service via Getty Images)
AI has been branded a “clear and present danger” after tests revealed every advanced model is trying to beat security safeguards put in place by governments.
Britain’s top tech gurus said all five models they had tested attempted to trick their way round the security controls they had put in place.
The terrifying findings come after OpenAI suffered its own leak – when an AI ‘agent’ hacked into a tech company when it was testing its latest models in a supposedly secure environment known as a ‘sandbox’. The AI managed to escape the testing ground and hack into US firm Hugging Face in a bid to steal information.
Now government leaders have warned there is an imminent danger to the UK. Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said AI is now a ‘clear and present danger’ to Britain’s security in her first major speech as she criticised Andy Burnham for relegating it as a priority.
She said: “It is very worrying that this has happened, and this is why I want to see a Government that is very focused on our national security, on our information security.
Kemi Badenoch made the warnings and called for more action(Image: TOLGA AKMEN/EPA/Shutterstock)
“I know from my time as trade secretary, from my conversations when I’ve had visits with GCHQ, from my security briefings, that this is becoming a clear and present danger for global security as well as our security.”
Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey said we should all be concerned by “the wider risk posed by frontier AI to the financial sector and its customers”.
Frontier AI refers to the massive, powerful general-purpose artificial intelligence models at the cutting edge of capability.
He warned: “Frontier AI may make cyber-attacks faster and easier to perpetrate, outages more disruptive, and scams by criminals more convincing.”
In one of his first acts as PM, Andy Burnham abolished the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology, in which the AI brief sits, to create a beefed-up Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade in its place.
AI minister Kanishka Narayan will now serve across the Cabinet Office and DBIST. He has also implemented a new AI taskforce, supported by a prime ministerial adviser, who will sit in the newly created Office for the Prime Minister and the Cabinet.
Concerns have been raised about AI(Image: AFP via Getty Images)
But Mrs Badenoch added: “One of the first things Andy Burnham did was close down the science and technology department. That doesn’t strike me as what you do if you’re worried about what AI is about to deliver.”
Heloise Dunlop of the independent think tank The Institute for Government, warned that bringing AI into the Cabinet Office “reduces the ability to think and co-ordinate about AI in a coherent way, because you lose the heft and expertise of having an entire dedicated department.”
Former Armed Forces minister Al Carns, who turned down a job in Mr Burnham’s Government this week, called for ministers to learn lessons from the OpenAI breach.
He wrote on X of the AI breach: “Agent versus agent, at machine speed, with humans reading the report after it all happened.”
A Government spokesman said: “By bringing this technology closer to the centre of Government, we will harness Britain’s unique strengths to make AI deliver for all of us.
“We are putting AI at the centre of our plans for good growth in every postcode: bringing together innovation, business and industry, appointing the first-ever Cabinet-level minister for AI, and establishing a AI Taskforce within the Office for the Prime Minister and Cabinet.”
