\u201cAs AI becomes more embedded in critical services, in domains like defence, national security, critical infrastructure and healthcare we shouldn\u2019t depend solely on systems we can\u2019t inspect or control, or that could be restricted or even switched off,\u201d said Williamson.<\/p>\n
In June Washington temporarily blocked the release outside the US of Anthropic\u2019s latest models, and has reportedly asked leading AI labs to withhold their models from being tested by the UK\u2019s AI Security Institute until they have been examined by AISI\u2019s US counterpart.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve seen now that both political and commercial pressures mean we may not have access [to AI] in all the circumstances when we want it. That is not a place where a nation wants to be,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Williamson added: \u201cThere\u2019s a set of circumstances where it would be a good idea for us to have something that we don\u2019t have to ask other people\u2019s permission to use.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said national resilience would be a focus of ATI\u2019s work amid concern about the geopolitical situation and the risk posed by increasingly powerful AI systems.<\/p>\n
Those concerns were highlighted last month by the UK prime minister, Andy Burnham, announcing a new national centre to tackle state-backed disinformation<\/a>, and Anthropic predicting the technology had a greater than 10% chance of wiping out humanity by 2030<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a moment when national resilience is definitely what the country needs and it\u2019s definitely a thing I think the Turing institute can help with,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are facing a more adversarial world, more frequent shocks to our critical infrastructure and now powerful AI amplifying these threats. To strengthen national resilience, the Turing will focus on securing critical systems against disruption, countering threats from AI itself and helping to shape the right strategic AI capability for the UK.\u201d<\/p>\n Williamson said the institute could assist in building such resilience by helping produce uses for AI \u201cfor the public good\u201d, working on areas from weather forecasting to farming, as well as helping spot disinformation. Referring to state-led disinformation campaigns, he said: \u201cIt\u2019s very dangerous for the state of democracy and it\u2019s an area that we can monitor.\u201d<\/p>\n Williamson is the former head of His Majesty\u2019s Government Communications Centre, a secretive government body that makes gadgets for UK spy agencies and counts Alan Turing \u2013 the second world war codebreaker and AI pioneer after which ATI is named \u2013 among its former staff.<\/p>\n Williamson said it had become clear in recent months that the UK needed \u201cmore agency on access to technology\u201d and a stronger sovereign position in AI. \u201cIt feels pretty uncomfortable if you don\u2019t have some control or ability to use technologies when you want them, and also harder to imagine how you build an economy on the top of stuff that can disappear,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a>Free newsletter |Every weekday<\/p>\n Sign up to First Edition<\/p>\n Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what\u2019s happening and why it matters<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n In recent weeks Christine Lagarde, the president of the European Central Bank, and Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, have urged Europe to be more self-sufficient in AI, with Lagarde speaking about the threat of being \u201ccut off\u201d<\/a> from US and Chinese technology.<\/p>\n Williamson cited China as another reason for boosting domestic AI, amid concerns that Chinese-made systems might not \u201ccoincide with our values\u201d. He said: \u201cTry asking some of these models about some events in the recent past in China and you\u2019re not going to get an answer that\u2019s particularly helpful if you\u2019re doing GCSE history.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the defining technology of our time. We want to be able to shape that technology \u2026 in a way that accords with who we are and our values,\u201d he said, adding that while ATI and the UK probably could not match the financial resources of major AI labs, they could still produce \u201cnationally owned IP\u201d or smaller models that could be made available to startups.<\/p>\n \u201cWe can be ambitious here without trying to copy what frontier labs are doing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Williamson said ATI, a registered charity, could be an \u201cobjective and helpful\u201d arbiter of concerns about AI, including existential threat. \u201cA national institute should be an active partner to government and the public more generally in helping to navigate some of this stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n He said there was a \u201ca lot of stuff being tossed around\u201d on the existential threat risk that \u201cis not always well grounded in science\u201d. Referring to the penchant among some in the sector for expressing the risk of AI-triggered extinction in percentage terms, he said: \u201cI\u2019m not sure it\u2019s helpful trying to assign particular percentages to it because I have not seen anyone show me a convincing evidence of how they\u2019ve arrived at the number they then start throwing around.\u201d<\/p>\n Williamson indicated that the focus on national resilience would enable ATI to keep doing work on the environment that Keir Starmer\u2019s government had wanted to sideline. In 2025 the then technology secretary, Peter Kyle, wrote to ATI\u2019s chair demanding the institute switch its main focus to defence and security. Williamson\u2019s predecessor Jean Innes resigned soon afterwards<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cFor me climate is as much a national security issue as defence. For me, it [national resilience] is a frame that enables us to cover the range of threats and opportunities to the UK,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The UK must not become dependent on foreign AI systems that can be switched off at short notice…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":927973,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,276,277,49,48,61],"class_list":["post-927972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/927972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=927972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/927972\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/927973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=927972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=927972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=927972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1791649942_11_1000.jpg\")
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