Microsoft CEO Nadella Urges Industry to Treat Advanced AI Models as Already Compromised, With Mandatory Kill Switches

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella called for a fundamental shift in how companies build and deploy advanced AI systems, proposing that all frontier models—whether proprietary or open-source—should be treated as insider threats from inception, complete with external emergency controls and mandatory shutdown capabilities. In an essay published October 10 titled "Models as Insider Risks in the Super Intelligence Era," Nadella argued that the industry must abandon the assumption that AI models are inherently trustworthy. "The most trustworthy Super Intelligence system will not be the one with the model we trust most. It will be the one that enables us to trust the model the least," he wrote.