Sir Stephen Fry Urges MPs to Back Our Bill
As MPs selected in the private members' bill ballot decide which bills to introduce, Sir Stephen Fry provides ControlAI with a powerful endorsement.
This week we have an exciting update for you on our efforts to ban superintelligence and prevent the risk of extinction it poses. Sir Stephen Fry has made a strong endorsement of our UK bill, urging MPs to introduce it to Parliament. Plus: Some updates from ControlAI and a brief digest of the week’s news.
If you find this article useful, we encourage you to share it with your friends! If you’re concerned about the threat posed by AI and want to do something about it, we also invite you to contact your lawmakers. We have tools that enable you to do this in as little as a minute.
If you live in the UK, please ask MPs to introduce our bill to ban superintelligence to Parliament!
The Artificial Superintelligence Security Bill
Last week, a unique opportunity opened in the UK to make a real difference in tackling the risk of extinction posed by superintelligence — AI vastly smarter than humans.
Twenty Members of Parliament were selected in the private members’ bill ballot, a lottery which MPs enter into once per parliamentary session, with the winners getting to introduce legislation to Parliament to be debated, and potentially passed into law.
Among these were two supporters of our UK campaign for binding regulation on the most powerful AIs — Sir Desmond Swayne and Sir John Whittingdale. Currently, over 100 UK politicians have joined our campaign, recognising the risk of extinction posed by superintelligent AI.
So if we had a bill that would actually help address this danger that leading AI scientists, Nobel Prize winners, and even the CEOs of the top AI companies themselves are warning of, that would be great. We have such a bill!
Coinciding with the announcement of the private members’ bill ballot results, we’ve published our Artificial Superintelligence Security Bill, an updated version of the bill we presented to Number 10 last year.
There’s only one known method to prevent the risk of extinction posed by superintelligence, which is not to build it. Our approach taken in the bill is in line with this common sense approach.
If passed, our bill would prohibit the development of artificial superintelligence in the UK, criminalising the development, deployment or operation of the technology in the country. Chief company executives and senior decision-makers responsible would face personal liability.
One immediate question this should raise is that of what to do about other countries? Superintelligent AI, if developed, would not be constrained by borders. Wherever it is developed, we would all be at its mercy everywhere. Whether it is developed in the UK, the US, or China, we are faced with a risk of extinction. Superintelligence can only be prevented from being developed if there is international agreement on this.
For this reason, our bill explicitly requires the UK to pursue an international treaty banning the development of superintelligence worldwide.
The UK has led the way on the international regulation of dangerous technologies, helping build the nuclear non-proliferation regime, supporting bans on chemical weapons, and in 2023 convening the first global AI Safety Summit in Bletchley Park. In the Bletchley Declaration, all the major AI powers recognized the potential from AI for catastrophic harm, and committed to work together on tackling the risks.
Now, Britain can lead again.
We believe that the UK passing legislation like our bill that prohibits superintelligence, setting a clear international example, and pursuing agreement internationally would make a huge difference. Currently, there is not a single country in the world that has done this.
We’d love it if one of the MPs selected in the ballot chose to introduce our bill, so we’ve been encouraging our supporters to write to these MPs asking them to do so. We’ve built a contact tool for this specific purpose, that lets you do it in just a minute. If you’re in the UK, and haven’t used it yet, please do so!
https://ukbill.controlai.com
Let the Right Thing Be Done
In a public statement just provided to ControlAI, Sir Stephen Fry has joined the call, urging MPs to introduce our bill to Parliament.
Announced earlier today on Twitter, British polymath, actor, author and broadcaster Sir Stephen Fry compared AI to the splitting of the atom, noting that even at the height of the Cold War it was obvious it must be regulated and controlled.
Sir Stephen emphasised the extinction risk posed by superintelligent AI that top AI scientists are warning of.
His full statement:
The power of AI is such that it can rightly be compared to the power unleashed by the splitting of the atom. No one doubted, in the 1940s and ’50s - even at the height of the Cold War - that atomic power should be regulated and controlled. The possibility of AI reaching Superintelligence presents threats to our species of equal if not greater potential for existential harm than nuclear power. British mathematicians and scientists have done much to advance this technology and the leading ones, the Nobel Laureates and ’godfathers of AI’ are loudest in their calls for proper regulation.
By introducing ControlAI’s Bill as a Private Member’s Bill, MPs would allow Britain to lead the way in keeping this technology safe. The benefits that AI can bring without needing to leap to AGI let alone ASI - are enough already to achieve miracles in medicine and other area where mankind will benefit. This is an absolutely critical moment for us all.
Let the right thing be done.
We’re extremely grateful to receive this strong endorsement from such a respected figure. The development of superintelligence threatens the security of the UK and every country on earth.
Right now, there is a fantastic opportunity for MPs to lead and protect humanity. Let’s not miss it!
More AI
The International Scientific Exchange for AI Safety
ControlAI’s Sophie Toura participated in the International Scientific Exchange for AI Safety in Singapore last week. The conference brought together technical experts, researchers, scientists, and policymakers to discuss frontier risks posed by AI systems ahead of the publication of the 2026 Global AI Safety Research Priorities Report.
It was great catching up with Stuart Russell, Yoshua Bengio and Max Tegmark!
Professor Dave Explains
ControlAI’s founder and CEO Andrea Miotti has just done an interview with Professor Dave, a YouTuber with an audience of over 4M subscribers who posts educational science content and debunks conspiracy theories.
In the interview, Andrea explains why the risk of superintelligence causing human extinction is something we should take seriously, and what we can do to prevent it. Check it out here!
Al Jazeera
ControlAI’s US Director Connor Leahy has made an appearance on Al Jazeera’s Upfront with Redi Tlhabi, discussing why experts are warning that the development of superintelligence could cause human extinction. You can watch the full segment here!
The Economics of Extinction
Australia’s Assistant Minister for Productivity, The Hon. Dr Andrew Leigh MP has given a lecture on the economics of extinction, citing expert estimates of the risk of superintelligent AI causing human extinction.
Pope Leo’s Encyclical
The Pope has published his encyclical on AI, calling for the ‘disarming’ of the technology and the most rigorous constraints.
Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.8
Anthropic has launched its latest AI, Claude Opus 4.8. In the announcement post, they say they expect to bring “Mythos-class” AIs to all their customers in the coming weeks. Mythos is an AI that Anthropic developed with advanced cyberhacking capabilities that they said is too dangerous to release.
They say they’re making progress on safeguards to facilitate such a release, but already we’ve seen threat actors abuse Anthropic’s weaker AIs, for example in hacking the Mexican government, stealing data on about 200 million people.
Take Action
If you’re concerned about the threat from AI, you should contact your representatives. You can find our contact tools here that let you write to them in as little as a minute: https://controlai.com/take-action
If you live in the UK, please ask MPs to introduce our bill to ban superintelligence to Parliament!
And if you have 5 minutes per week to spend on helping make a difference, we encourage you to sign up to our Microcommit project! Once per week we’ll send you a small number of easy tasks you can do to help.
We also have a Discord you can join if you want to connect with others working on helping keep humanity in control, and we always appreciate any shares or comments — it really helps!
Absolutely incredible that Stephen Fry is supporting the ControlAI bill!
It's just so damned heartwarming and vindicating that a lifelong hero of mine is on-board with our cause.
I am now 80 years old. I just finished taking a course on “AI” regulation at a university here in Va.USA.
We learned how and how much each country is taking the journey to full compliance of regulating AI.
Is this being ignored like the environment is being ignored?
China is well ahead of us in the “Regulations” division.
America is well behind simply because we have allowed a human who is totally controlled by corporations and so puts a road block in front of the most important issue facing humans.
Regulation is a good word. It is not a control of your freedom. As those who only see $$$$$ signs in their thinking , regulation seems to mean taking their freedom to decide all issues for the rest of humanity.
The only time civilizations became great is by regulating purpose.
Read and or watch some factual history. “Abraham Lincoln”, “FDR”, “The Great War”.., all new and on Netflix.
Study those documentaries as tho’ your life depends entirely on your knowing the facts.
And guess what: your life totally depends on you knowing the facts.