Big Boss Interview

Artificial intelligence is advancing faster than the safeguards around it, and industry self-regulation is "not sufficient any longer". That is according to Brad Smith, president of Microsoft. Speaking to Will Bain on BBC's Big Boss Interview, Mr Smith said the world should worry more about AI safety than about any previous generation of digital technology in his 33 years in the industry. Microsoft is one of the world's largest AI developers and an investor in OpenAI. Mr Smith's comments set out a position that goes beyond the "tremendous self-regulation" praised in a recent White House AI accord."Right now I'd argue that AI is moving forward faster than the speed of safety," Mr Smith said. "That's not good for the protection of the public. It's not even good for the industry itself."Mr Smith set out three measures. The first is a "safety brake or emergency brake" on any AI system controlling autonomous devices or critical infrastructure, an idea often described as a kill switch within the industry. He said it should sit in the companies running the models and in the cloud infrastructure they run on. The second is a legal obligation to report incidents: if AI agents "break loose" and break into systems, the victims should be told, as they are after a data breach.The third measure, which he called the biggest and most important, is whether government evaluators should have to sign off frontier models before release. "Just remember, right now, your washing machine is subject to more safety rules than AI," he said. He added that cartons of milk and passenger aircraft are subject to inspection and certification.He said the UK was the country best placed to lead. The AI Security Institute, he said, has the strongest technical capability in the world to test AI models: "It's the United Kingdom. They are the best." In his account, the US began building similar capability and then slowed down. Asked about Anthropic declining UK testing of one of its models, he said the question now was when developers should be required to satisfy a government regulator that a product is safe before it is released. He described Britain as "a bridge across the Atlantic and across the English Channel". He also noted that in Washington, people "don't look at London the same way they look at Brussels".Mr Smith also responded to Vice President JD Vance, who had accused Microsoft of abusing the H-1B visa system more than any other US company. Mr Smith said the vice president's staff "got the maths wrong". He said about 80% of the company's 6,000 visa applications were for existing employees, every green card applicant was already employed by Microsoft, and the company hired 9,000 Americans last year.On data centres, he said the cost of new grid capacity "should not be the neighbours… it should be the industry itself".Presenter: Will Bain Producer: Olie D'Albertanson Editor: Henry Jones

Britain is "walking into a second significant energy crisis", the boss of the country's largest electricity generator has warned. Simone Rossi, chief executive of EDF in the UK, told the BBC's Business Editor Simon Jack on the Big Boss Interview that household bills are forecast to rise by around 20% in January. Customers still owe more than £5bn from the last crisis, four years ago.Gas is driving the rise. Gas prices are up 25%, while the electricity part of the price cap is 4% lower than in January. His advice is blunt: where you can, choose electricity over gas. He blames wars hitting the world's two biggest gas suppliers at once (Russia and Qatar), which he calls "almost unthinkable".Closer to the UK, he is asked whether ministers should approve the Rosebank and Jackdaw fields, he says: "Green light. Absolutely. No doubt about it." With most homes heated by gas and most cars running on petrol or diesel, weaning Britain off fossil fuels will take decades. Until then, he argues, producing oil and gas at home keeps jobs and tax receipts in the UK and pollutes less than importing it. "It's a no-brainer."Nor does he expect relief soon. Ed Miliband promised bills £300 lower by the end of this parliament. Mr Rossi expects them to stay stubbornly high until 2030. Britain built an energy system for rising demand, but demand fell even as the economy grew by 30% and the population by about 10 million. The cause, he says, is deindustrialisation. The fixed costs of the grid are now spread across fewer users, and "somebody's got to pay".That explains the paradox of cheap renewables and expensive bills. Wind and solar are the cheapest power to produce, but cost is not the same as value. Electricity is hard to store and does not travel well, so every wind farm far from where people live needs costly cables, grid and storage. Last year Britain paid wind farms to switch off nine terawatt-hours of power while importing more than £40bn of fuel.His answer runs against intuition: more demand means lower bills. Ten million electric vehicles, two million heat pumps and more data centres would spread those fixed costs more widely. He wants ministers to move more policy costs from bills into general taxation, extend the zero VAT rate on electricity beyond April, and introduce a proper social tariff. Bills, he says, have become "a tool to pay for a lot of stuff", and that makes them regressive.Then there is the winter. Britain's gas storage is low, and relying on imports could mean "staggering" prices at peak times. "If we are caught short," he warns, "basically we are naked in front of the markets."Presenter: Simon Jack Producer: Ollie Smith & Olie D'Albertanson01:15 Why UK energy bills are so high 04:11 Why cheap renewables don't mean cheap bills 07:30 Walking into a second energy crisis 12:33 Paying wind farms to switch off 13:48 Rosebank, Jackdaw and the North Sea 17:20 Bills stubbornly high until 2030 21:58 Clean power 2030 versus reindustrialisation 27:41 Hinkley Point, Sizewell C and the cost of nuclear 32:28 Low gas storage and summer grid scares

The chief executive of Britain’s biggest listed technology company has questioned the government’s push to build more data centres, arguing that the UK does not have the scale to become a truly sovereign AI nation.Steve Hare, chief executive of Sage, says Britain should be realistic about where it can compete.He argues that data centres themselves are simply infrastructure and do not give the UK control over the underlying technology. If Britain wants greater technological sovereignty, he believes it would need to work with larger economies rather than try to build the whole AI stack alone.Instead, Hare thinks the bigger opportunity is in applications: using increasingly cheap and widely available AI models to build products that solve real problems for customers.He points to the rapid fall in the cost of leading AI models and believes much of the value will ultimately sit with the companies building useful services on top of them.His caution is informed partly by experience. Hare was finance director of Marconi when the dotcom bubble burst in 2001. Looking at the huge sums now being spent on AI infrastructure, he thinks much of that capacity will eventually be used, but not necessarily at today’s prices.He is also worried about the wider UK economy.Sage provides accounting, payroll and finance software to millions of small and medium-sized businesses, giving Hare a close view of what is happening inside companies. Its data suggests profits are rising faster than revenues, with many business owners holding on to cash rather than investing.Hare says uncertainty around tax and economic policy is making that caution worse. He is particularly critical of repeated speculation over capital gains tax, which he believes risks pushing entrepreneurs to build their next businesses elsewhere.He also points to Britain’s long-running problem with scale. The UK creates large numbers of new businesses, but relatively few grow into major global technology companies before being sold, often to overseas buyers.Hare is due to meet the new prime minister at Number 10 and says the government now needs to make some difficult choices.His central message is that stronger growth is the only sustainable answer to rising spending pressures, borrowing costs and the demand for higher public revenues.And his advice to both business leaders and government is simple:“Be bold and be paranoid.”Presenter: Sean Farrington Producer: Olie D'Albertanson Editor: Henry Jones01:47 AI hype and the pace of change 08:14 How AI will change work 09:18 Growth as the UK's biggest challenge 15:03 Tax speculation and entrepreneurs moving abroad 19:35 Apprenticeships and employment rights 23:49 The prime minister's tough choices 27:20 Britain's scale-up problem 28:49 Data centres & why the UK cannot be a sovereign AI nation 36:02 Lessons from the dotcom crash 41:02 Be bold and be paranoid

The executive chair of Paul Smith says working from home “just doesn’t work” for young people and has urged the government to stay out of decisions over where employees work.Ewan Venters argues that younger workers risk missing the informal learning and mentoring that comes from being around more experienced colleagues. He traces his own career back to joining Sainsbury’s at sixteen and learning from senior business figures by working alongside them, describing the experience as his “university education”.Venters says he is a “huge fan” of flexibility, but believes individual businesses rather than government should decide how it works. “Let business figure out the flexibility,” he says. “Please, let’s not have government intervention on whether you can work from home or not.”He says the government’s approach to employment rights will be one of the things he watches most closely.Venters took over as executive chair of Paul Smith after joining the board to review a business that has recorded losses for six consecutive years. He says previous management failed to respond quickly enough to structural changes in fashion retail as the wholesale market consolidated. “Quite frankly, they did take the eye off the ball,”.The changing retail landscape also leads Venters into a critique of pre-pack administrations. Paul Smith is among the creditors affected by the restructuring of Harvey Nichols, and Venters describes the use of pre-packs as “dubious in terms of ethics and way business gets done”. He says suppliers could recover only a fraction of what they are owed and questions the impact on smaller brands.We asked Frasers Group, who bought Harvey Nichols out of administration, for a response, but they have not replied at the moment.Internationally, Venters points to the US as one of Paul Smith’s biggest opportunities. He says the brand is growing four to five times faster there than anywhere else in the world and is preparing to open on Madison Avenue.He also calls for the return of tax-free shopping for international visitors to Britain, arguing that its removal has damaged growth. Presenter: Sean Farrington Producer: Olie D'Albertanson Editor: Henry Jones00:00 Will and Sean intro the pod 03:00 Ewan joins the pod - explains why he's at Paul Smith 05:27 Losses and what went wrong at Paul Smith 07:24 Recovery plan. 10:34 Jobs, productivity and AI 16:27 Harvey Nichols and pre-pack administrations 21:26 America Growth Strategy 23:42 WFH and back to the office 29:16 UK Budget and Tax-Free shopping