Question

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture Media and Sport, how much money and staff time is dedicated to scenario planning and risk mitigation regarding loss-of-control events involving autonomous and multi-agent AI systems.

The Government conducts horizon-scanning, risk assessment and contingency planning to understand and manage a range of emerging risks from AI systems, including potential loss of control incidents. This work is undertaken across a number of departments and agencies as part of wider activities relating to national security, resilience and cyber security. We are in the process of expanding work related to loss of control and are therefore unable to provide specific financial and staffing figures at this time.

The Government is investing in capabilities to strengthen resilience, mitigations and response to AI loss of control incidents. In the Budget, we announced a £40 million investment into a new National Agentic Security Unit to develop new capabilities to detect, investigate and respond to agentic AI incidents, including loss of control incidents. We have also provided £120 million of extra funding for the AI Security Institute, whose research includes understanding loss of control risks and developing technical mitigations against them. Alongside this, we are amending the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill and committing to further secondary legislation to protect essential services from AI agent loss of control risks.