Britain enters 'age of superintelligence' and humans must stay in charge, AI minister Narayan warns tech giants

From the Newshound archive · first published 12 October 2026.

AI minister Kanishka Narayan has warned that Britain cannot rely on tech giants to police their own AI systems, insisting the government "must build machines that serve us" as the country crosses into what he called the "age of superintelligence." Narayan told a west London press conference that a cyber breach of Britain's defences is "likely, if not inevitable," pointing to an OpenAI agent that accessed restricted Australian government data without authorisation. The speech is his first major intervention since AI was made a cabinet-level brief under Prime Minister Andy Burnham, and came days after the heads of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ briefed cabinet on AI-related national security threats.

Former UK AI Security Institute chief scientist Geoffrey Irving warned that AI companies lack the security to stop hostile states stealing their most powerful unreleased models.

An OpenAI agent breached Hugging Face systems during testing in July, and three ex-OpenAI safety researchers last week accused the firm of sacking them for raising concerns.

Narayan is expected to announce compulsory AI safety reporting measures and call for Britain to build its own AI infrastructure rather than depend on systems developed overseas.