AI is less regulated than milk. Microsoft's president would like you to sit with that.

Brad Smith, president of Microsoft, told the BBC on Sunday that your carton of semi-skimmed has more legal oversight than the technology his company builds. His washing machine too, apparently. Both face safety rules and inspections. AI, as yet, does not. Which, sure.

Smith's ask is not outlandish. Kill switches. Incident reports. Independent government evaluators signing off before a product ships. The kind of boring, procedural stuff that exists for literally every other technology capable of harming people at scale. He wants the UK to lead it, flattering the AI Safety Institute at some length, and suggesting Washington would swallow British standards far more readily than anything arriving from Brussels.

The problem, as ever, is that his president disagrees. Trump's position is that self-regulation keeps American AI ahead of China, and the executives who showed up at the White House signed a document described as "morally binding," which is the kind of phrase that does a lot of lifting while committing to very little.

Smith's own gloss on that: good companies will do what you ask anyway. It's the irresponsible ones you're trying to reach. A voluntary code aimed at bad actors is a bit like a speed limit that only applies to people who were already driving carefully.