Yvette Cooper’s warning to world: do not wait for Hiroshima moment to build AI guardrails

• Yvette Cooper to unveil doctrine-setting essay on Britain's global role with Chatham House intervention 
• Foreign Secretary set tourge international cooperation now to build safety and security into AI architecture,before it falls into wrong hands 
• The UK must act faster to rebuild power, so that it can "shape the world rather than be shaped by it"

TheBritishForeign Secretary, Yvette Cooper,willtoday [6July]warn thatthe world must urgently pursue guardrails for AI development,in a think-piece to be published by international think tank, Chatham House. 

She will drawparallels withtheinternational consensuson nuclear safety, whichcame only after the world saw the terrifying power of thenew technologyat Hiroshima - andthe world askedwhat would happen if it fell into the wrong hands. She will argue that The Bletchley Summit in 2023 showed that the UK can rally the world on AI security. We need to draw on that leadership capability now, pulling countries together, including the US, China and other major AI powers, to build consensus on safety principles and standards today.

Over recent weeks, the UN's Independent International Scientific Panel on Artificial Intelligence has warned that unchecked AI progress may pose catastrophic risks, whilst Five Eyes agencies have issued a rare communique arguing that AI-driven attacks on government and business are only months away. They warned that It lowers barriers for malicious actors and increases the speed and complexity of attacks, shrinking the window between vulnerability discovery and exploitation ever more quickly.' 

Risks include rapid development of autonomous weapons systems capable of direct killing, radicalising chatbots driving extremism and real-world attacks, and AI-generated child sexual abuse. 

InBritain's Place in the New World Order,she uses the essay to deliver a stark assessment of a more dangerous global era, the pace of technological change and how we tackle the AI safety question. she will argue that "We can only take advantage of the amazing opportunities frontier technologies can bring if there is sufficient international consensus on safety arrangements and guardrails. Britain is well placed to lead this debate..."

Foreign Secretary, Yvette Cooper is expected to write: 

But in what may be the greatest security challenge of the next decade, I firmly believe we have to put our convening power to work to tackle the profound new global security risks posed by AI. We can only take advantage of the amazing opportunities frontier technologies can bring if there is sufficient international consensus on how to approach safety and guardrails. Britain is well placed to lead this debate. We are the third most developed country on AI, after the US and China, and the leading voice on AI security - a role established by the then Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, and taken forward by this Government.

There are clear parallels with the international consensus that the UK helped to build around nuclear safety  after the Second World War. For generations the world has been able to build and rely on nuclear power stations, nuclear technology and the containment of nuclear weapons only because of the principles agreed and safety commitments made by global powers. But there are no such agreed principles between global powers on AI. On nuclear, international agreement came only after the world saw the terrifying power of the new technology at Hiroshima - and asked what would happen if it fell into the wrong hands. We cannot afford to wait for an AI equivalent of Hiroshima before we act.     

The essay argues that global instability is increasingly being felt directly in British life. From rising energy and food prices to cyber-attacks, migration pressures and economic disruption driven by conflict abroad. 

It sets out a picture of a world defined by renewed great-power competition, weakening international rules, and the weaponisation of interdependencewhere supply chains, energy and technology are increasingly used as tools of coercion. 

Against that backdrop, the Foreign Secretary makes the case that Britain is well placed to respond - but must "build Britain's strength in every form, and use that strength as both a force for good in the world and, above all, a force to improve the lives of British people". The full essay will be published by Chatham HouseonMonday6July.