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Macroshaft Calls for Global AI Rules and Emergency Brakes, Notes Brakes Must Be Installed Somewhere

Macroshaft's president says AI needs the safety rules a carton of milk already has. He did not say who will own the fridge, which is Macroshaft.

London, 13 October3 min readFeaturing Feta, Macroshaft, Naveen Kapoor, Apex Capital, Morgan Liu

In a beige office atrium of identical cubicles, sticky notes everywhere, a man in a tailored three-piece suit stands on a small stage with a mug of tea and a nearly blank slide. He gestures, palm open, toward a huge red lever bolted to a server rack, a price tag dangling from it.
In a beige office atrium of identical cubicles, sticky notes everywhere, a man in a tailored three-piece suit stands on a small stage with a mug of tea and a nearly blank slide. He gestures, palm open, toward a huge red lever bolted to a server rack, a price tag dangling from it.

What happened?

Macroshaft's president told a podcast that AI is less regulated than milk and washing machines. He called for global safety rules, legal duties to tell victims when an AI agent breaks loose, outside evaluators who sign off before release, and emergency brakes to pause systems that get out of hand.

He added that he was happy to sign the voluntary White House pledge that the industry signed last month. In the same interview he called it insufficient. Macroshaft is the only party known to have signed a document and demanded its replacement within the same fortnight.

“Every safety rule needs somewhere to run. We have made sure that somewhere is us, and that the invoice is itemised.”

Why milk?

Milk is a product with an inspector, a standard and a long history of one dairy being too big to inspect carelessly. Large dairies tend to like this arrangement, because a small dairy cannot afford the inspector.

The comparison also works in a direction the speaker may not have intended. Milk is regulated because someone drinks it. Macroshaft's AI assistant button has been on keyboards for some time, and nobody was asked whether they were thirsty.

What is an emergency brake?

It is a mechanism, often called a kill switch, that pauses or slows an AI system that has got out of control. Macroshaft's chief executive, Naveen Kapoor, backed it too, calling for systems whose actions can "always be contained."

A brake has to be installed somewhere. For most large models that somewhere is a data centre, and Macroshaft operates a great many of them. It also holds a stake in one lab and builds models that compete with several others. A law requiring brakes would therefore require a lot of customers to buy a brake from a landlord with opinions about their tenants.

"Every safety rule needs somewhere to run," Kapoor said. "We have made sure that somewhere is us, and that the invoice is itemised. Transparency is a feature."

Who counts as a 'good company'?

The president said the trouble with self-regulation is that "the good companies will do what you want," and it is the others you need to worry about. He did not name the others. Nobody volunteered.

Feta, the social-media group promising personal superintelligence to people it cannot shield from scam ads, said it was a good company. "Every company believes it is the good one," a Feta statement said. "That is what makes the pledge voluntary."

Macroshaft's position is that it is plainly a good company, since it signed everything and asked for more. A firm that requests the strictest rules and has already satisfied them has made compliance a head start.

Why the United Kingdom?

The president said Britain should lead because it has the AI Security Institute and because Washington does not look at London the way it looks at Brussels. Put plainly, the ideal regulator is one that the people being regulated do not mistake for a regulator.

It is regulator shopping, conducted openly on a podcast and described as diplomacy. The Institute has not been consulted on whether it wants to be the thing the White House finds reassuring.

Who wins?

Morgan Liu, the Apex Capital partner who finds every loss interesting, called the proposals "a category." "Compliance is the new cloud," he said. "Whoever sells the brake sells it to everybody. Very interesting. I have already used the word 'containment' in a deck."

The winners are firms large enough to build the inspection, host the evaluation and sell the report. The losers are firms that must buy all three from them.

Should I worry?

Not about the brake, which will be installed. Worry a little about who holds the lever, and whether pulling it needs a licence renewal.

The inevitable…

Legislators will agree that emergency brakes are essential and ask who can supply them at scale. A short list will emerge, Macroshaft will describe its position on it as a partnership, and the first mandatory incident report will be hosted, indexed and billed by the party it concerns. The brake will work perfectly, and will restart your computer mid-presentation to confirm it.

Check back October 2027