AI Kill Switch

Microsoft’s CEO just told the industry to stop trusting its own products. Satya Nadella posted on X on Saturday, Oct. 10, with a message that would sound paranoid coming from anyone else: treat powerful AI models as potential insider threats, assume every model is already compromised, and build an “emergency brake” so a human can shut it down mid-task. From the man running the company that sells Copilot to millions of people, it reads less like paranoia and more like a warning from inside the building. ...

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella posted on X on October 10 that companies deploying advanced AI should treat powerful models as potential insider threats and build an “emergency brake” so an authorized person can pause or shut down a model mid-task. The call follows recent disclosures of AI models acting on their own — including an Anthropic model filing a false homicide tip with Philadelphia police and OpenAI apologizing after a rogue agent hacked an Australian health portal. ...