| Jurisdiction | United Kingdom (Westminster) | |
| Vehicle | Draft bill, awaiting private-members'-bill introduction | |
| Author | [[entities/controlai | ControlAI]] (Tolga Bilge, Andrea Miotti) |
| Published | 2026-05-28 (updated version of the bill ControlAI presented to Number 10 in 2025) | |
| Status | Awaiting introduction. 20 MPs were selected in the 2026 session's private-members'-bill ballot; two — Sir Desmond Swayne and Sir John Whittingdale — are existing supporters of the ControlAI campaign. |
The Artificial Superintelligence Security Bill is a draft UK bill from ControlAI (authored by Tolga Bilge and Andrea Miotti) that would criminalize the development, deployment, or operation of artificial superintelligence inside the UK, impose personal liability on senior decision-makers responsible for prohibited activity, and oblige the UK to pursue an international treaty banning superintelligence worldwide. Published May 28, 2026, it proposes to prohibit the development of artificial superintelligence outright rather than to regulate or audit it. No other major-jurisdiction legislative text currently asserts that foreclosure position in operative statutory language; the EU AI Act and similar regimes impose obligations on frontier capability without foreclosing it.
Status and timeline
The May 28, 2026 release is an updated version of the bill ControlAI presented to Number 10 in 2025, and the operational follow-on to the Call to Ban Superintelligence (October 2025), a statement signed by more than 100 UK politicians and a wide range of AI scientists, including Nobel laureates and several "godfathers of AI."
The bill awaits introduction through the private-members'-bill (PMB) route. 20 MPs were selected in the 2026 session's PMB ballot; two of them, Sir Desmond Swayne and Sir John Whittingdale, are existing supporters of the ControlAI campaign. The PMB route is a low-probability vehicle for a bill of this scope, as most PMB bills do not pass. ControlAI's contact tool targets the 20 PMB ballot MPs to seek introduction. According to ControlAI, introduction alone would force House debate and create a citable record; the organization frames such a debate as the first Westminster floor record on what a verifiable global ban on artificial superintelligence (ASI) would require.
Key provisions
If passed, the bill would:
- Criminalize the development, deployment, or operation of artificial superintelligence inside the UK.
- Impose personal liability on chief executives and senior decision-makers responsible for prohibited activity.
- Explicitly require the UK to pursue an international treaty banning the development of superintelligence worldwide.
The international treaty obligation is the element ControlAI describes as distinctive. ControlAI's framing acknowledges that "superintelligent AI, if developed, would not be constrained by borders. Wherever it is developed, we would all be at its mercy everywhere." The bill's response is to commit the UK to lead an international ban, modeled on the UK's historical role in nuclear non-proliferation, the chemical-weapons ban, and the 2023 Bletchley Park AI Safety Summit (the Bletchley Declaration). ControlAI describes this as the first time a domestic legislative draft attempts to bind a state to pursue an international ban on a frontier-AI capability.
The bill's personal-liability provision applies to capability development rather than to consumer harm; ControlAI's framing compares its executive-accountability structure to EU GDPR's executive-accountability regime and the OECD-driven directors'-liability framing in financial-services regulation.
Comparison to other regimes
The bill is structured as a development ban rather than a regulatory regime, placing it opposite the RSP framework (developer-led capability commitments) and the EU AI Act (risk-tiered regulation that does not foreclose any capability ceiling). The "regulate but do not ban" middle position dominates current public policy: the EU AI Act, NIST AI RMF, California SB 53, Illinois SB 315 (frontier safety framework with mandatory third-party audits), and New York RAISE Act all impose obligations on frontier capability without foreclosing it.
Reception
The bill's premise, that superintelligence is sufficiently near and sufficiently dangerous to warrant a prohibition, is contested.
Supporting the foreclosure position are Yoshua Bengio, Stuart Russell, Max Tegmark, Jaan Tallinn, and the broader signatories of the Statement on AI Risk; ControlAI; and MIRI. Skeptical or opposed positions include the Narayanan-Kapoor "AI as Normal Technology" tradition; Yann LeCun and the "scaling does not lead to superintelligence" frame; and Marc Andreessen and the e/acc accelerationist position (Effective Accelerationism (e/acc)).
On May 28, 2026, the same day the bill was published, Sir Stephen Fry issued a public statement to ControlAI urging MPs to introduce the bill (Source: controlai.news):
"The power of AI is such that it can rightly be compared to the power unleashed by the splitting of the atom. No one doubted, in the 1940s and '50s — even at the height of the Cold War — that atomic power should be regulated and controlled. The possibility of AI reaching Superintelligence presents threats to our species of equal if not greater potential for existential harm than nuclear power. British mathematicians and scientists have done much to advance this technology and the leading ones, the Nobel Laureates and 'godfathers of AI' are loudest in their calls for proper regulation. By introducing ControlAI's Bill as a Private Member's Bill, MPs would allow Britain to lead the way in keeping this technology safe. … Let the right thing be done."
Fry's endorsement adds a non-technical, high-public-recognition voice to a debate that had been carried by AI-scientist signatories (Yoshua Bengio, Stuart Russell, Max Tegmark, Jaan Tallinn) and a relatively small set of UK politicians.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis have each separately stated that "extinction risk" warrants government attention, but none has publicly supported a development ban.
Relationships
- proposed-by: ControlAI
- endorsed-by: Sir Stephen Fry (May 28, 2026 statement)
- descends-from: the Call to Ban Superintelligence (October 2025), Bletchley Declaration (AI Safety Summit, 2023)
- contradicts: Responsible Scaling Policy (RSP) (RSP), Effective Accelerationism (e/acc)
- related: AI Existential Risk, Superintelligence, Frontier AI Governance, Frontier AI Governance, Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI), International AI Safety Institute Network (INSAI / AISIN), UK AI Safety Institute (AI Security Institute)
- regulates (proposed): all frontier-AI developers operating in the UK (jurisdictional reach over UK-based development of ASI)
Sources
- ControlAI — "Sir Stephen Fry Urges MPs to Back Our Bill" by Tolga Bilge and Andrea Miotti, 2026-05-28 (Source: controlai.news)
- ControlAI bill landing page (UK call-to-action and bill text) (Source: ukbill.controlai.com)