UK announces AI risk package, extending frontier-AI cyber defense pilots that found 1,000+ vulnerabilities

The UK government announced on October 12 a package of measures to protect Britain from risks posed by increasingly powerful AI, including extending a frontier-AI cyber defense program that ministers said has already helped find and fix more than 1,000 potential vulnerabilities across government systems, according to a GOV.UK news release.

AI Minister Kanishka Narayan set out the measures at Base One, Imperial College London's science and technology incubator. "I want Britain to become one of the hardest countries in the world to attack using artificial intelligence," he said, urging companies building the world's most powerful systems to investigate unexpected behavior and withhold any system whose risks cannot be adequately controlled.

The government said it will explore strengthening parts of the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill and the wider regime so essential services such as hospitals and utilities are better protected from emerging AI-related risk, including AI loss-of-control risk where autonomous systems evade human oversight. It will also examine how serious AI incidents and near misses should be identified and reported.

Work is underway with the National Cyber Security Centre and the AI Security Institute on how to respond to incidents involving AI agents. Narayan also confirmed that AISI scientists are conducting rigorous evaluations of the latest generation of advanced AI models. The package includes support for the emerging field of AI verification, with more detail to follow in coming months.