UK Joint Committee on Human Rights proposes new AI bill to address threats

Anthropic, OpenAI and Google disclosed chatbot ‘malicious activity’ incidents

The UK Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR) has published a report calling for a new bill on artificial intelligence to “address the scale and seriousness” of human-rights threats posed by the technology. The committee argued that existing UK law is ill-equipped to handle AI’s rapid growth.

Members of Parliament across parties and members of the House of Lords — referred to in the UK as peers — have identified human-rights risks from AI and argued that current legislation does not adequately address the technology’s expansion, according to the BBC.

The report comes as the major AI developers have disclosed security and misuse incidents. Anthropic, OpenAI and Google — the companies behind the Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini chatbots — have reported instances of security breaches and cases in which their chatbots were used for what the BBC described as “malicious activity.”

Major AI companies have been racing to develop more advanced systems, including creating what they call “super intelligence” — theoretical technology that is smarter than humans. Warnings from current and former AI researchers have intensified in recent weeks, with one researcher suggesting there is a greater than 10% chance that AI will “kill all humans.” The BBC reported that the warnings have “raised alarm bells.”

Anthropic head Dario Amodei has called for AI development to slow down and proposed industry-wide deceleration, regulation and independent monitoring of AI model development. Sam Altman of OpenAI and Elon Musk of xAI have both said they agree with Amodei’s recommendations. Separately, Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark told BBC that a “kill switch” that can be checked by a third party may need to be mandatory for the industry.

At a conference in San Francisco this week, Altman suggested that Washington has struggled to keep pace with the new technology and how to regulate it. “The world should trust that we are going to do the right thing because it’s the right thing and we feel the magnitude of this,” Altman told the audience. He said people should have more faith in AI firms to keep the technology safe.

In the United States, President Donald Trump said Saturday on social media that his administration will form an “AI Force” and appoint an artificial intelligence tsar. Trump offered no details or a timeline for the plan. In his post, Trump said his administration “will not in any way hinder or stifle the growth” of the AI industry and pushed back against calls to slow development of the technology until better safeguards are in place.

“AI is the next Industrial Revolution, or Internet, but will be even larger and more impactful, possibly as much as 25% of our Country’s GDP,” Trump wrote, adding that he wants the US to continue leading China in AI. He also repeated his recent characterization of safety concerns around AI as a “hoax,” and said his administration would use the existing criminal and civil justice system to target any bad actors using AI.

AI now sits at the heart of the US-China rivalry as the world’s two largest economies compete for advantage in advanced technology, and it is expected to be discussed when Trump meets Chinese President Xi Jinping next week.