Published : 15 Sep 2026, 10:52 PM
Updated : 16 Sep 2026, 11:50 AM
A co-founder of one of the world's biggest artificial intelligence companies says governments may need to make a mandatory shutdown mechanism for AI systems a legal requirement.
Jack Clark, one of seven founders of US firm Anthropic, tells the BBC that while most major AI laboratories already have ways of pulling the plug on their software, lawmakers may need to step in to enforce it, reports BBC.
"Should you mandate for companies to definitely have a kill switch? Is that kill switch verifiable by a third party?" Clark asks.
"I think that's the kind of thing society is going to want to know and might want to eventually pass rules around."
His comments come as concerns over AI's risks to humanity have intensified, with several executives and researchers at leading AI firms warning publicly about the technology's potential dangers, according to BBC.
Anthropic scientist Evan Hubinger has put the probability of human extinction from AI at above 10 percent within the next decade -- a figure Nobel Prize-winning computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton told the BBC was "not unreasonable."
Anthropic Chief Executive Dario Amodei has called for a slower, more closely monitored pace of AI development, though he added that any such measures should come "without sacrificing commercial advantage" -- a caveat that has drawn scrutiny from critics who argue such warnings are self-serving.
Anthropic, founded in 2021 by former employees of rival OpenAI, is currently valued at $965 billion and is preparing for a stock market listing.
OpenAI, valued at $852 billion, had been expected to follow suit but has delayed those plans, states BBC.
Clark declined to put a numerical probability on AI killing all humans, calling such statistics "not that useful", but warned that leaving the industry entirely unregulated amounted to "rolling dice with immense risks."
"We have to change the course of this industry," he said.
