OpenAI and Anthropic Tell British Lawmakers: Regulate Us

AI leaders joined whistleblowers and security leaders at a sweeping parliamentary session, while a few hundred meters away Britain's spy chief warned AI could be used to create new bioweapons. Representatives for OpenAI and Anthropic told a British parliamentary hearing that voluntary pledges were no longer enough to ensure safety and that new laws should be introduced, deepening a public schism with Google DeepMind and Meta, both of which declined to back new legislation. The Business, Innovation, Science, and Trade Committee, comprising a cross-party panel of MPs, held an evidence session on Tuesday with appearances from four frontier AI firms, four former staff of the firms turned whistleblowers and senior British civil servants. "The rules should be binding," Anthropic's head of Europe Liam Booth-Smith told the committee, when asked if the company's view was that AI safety now needs a statutory framework . The company, he said, has "consistently believed that there should be binding rules on companies and that voluntary commitments are not enough."