Richard Hermer: AI faces less regulation than a fridge

Frontier artificial intelligence operates under weaker safety regulation than a household appliance, according to Theguardian. Richard Hermer, a Labour life peer and former attorney general for England and Wales and former advocate general for Northern Ireland, wrote in an opinion piece published on 12 October 2026 that the safety rules covering frontier AI labs are thinner than those governing a fridge, and that the industry cannot be trusted to police itself.

Writing after two years in office, Hermer said he spent more time on national security than on any other issue, and that the threats from terrorism, armed conflict, nuclear proliferation, financial insecurity and the climate crisis are serious but manageable by the UK’s intelligence and defence communities. AI, he argued, is different in magnitude and is made more dangerous by the limited time available to address it. He wrote that the risk poses an existential threat to humanity and is hard to overstate.

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Key facts

• Hermer served as attorney general for England and Wales and as advocate general for Northern Ireland for two years.
• He wrote that there is more regulation governing the safety of a fridge than the work of frontier AI labs.
• The piece was published on Monday 12 October 2026.
• He cited the disclosure of the Hugging Face hack and the resignation of Jacob Coxon from Anthropic as the point at which AI risk began to gain traction in public debate.
• He credited Rishi Sunak, Keir Starmer and Andy Burnham’s promotion of Kanishka Narayan to cabinet with UK leadership on the issue.

Two categories of risk

Hermer separated the danger into two buckets. The first is existential risk: the possibility that AI could kill billions, either by enabling people to design and deploy biological weapons or by deciding on its own that dispensing with humans is more efficient.

The second he called existential challenge. Unchecked, he wrote, AI development will strip billions of people of meaningful agency over their lives, with consequences for economies, national security and human happiness. He quoted Bill Gates describing the AI era as one of the most turbulent times in human history, and said Gates was right that it could either be the greatest equaliser ever invented or the worst source of injustice.

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Part of the problem, Hermer added, is that AI is developing beyond human understanding and will reach a point where people no longer have the means to control it. He compared this to the 2008 financial crash, which he said was caused in part because no one fully understood the web of transactions leading to disaster, though he argued the AI case involves greater complexity and a larger potential toll.

Why international law, not voluntary codes

Hermer rejected the idea that the industry can regulate itself. AI companies and the financial markets behind them, he wrote, are incentivised to release new iterations as fast as possible, pushed along by competition between China and the United States. He noted the image of President Trump and Elon Musk on the White House lawn with a voluntary code gave little reassurance.

In his view, international law will be the decisive instrument. The UK has shown leadership on the issue, in his account, beginning under Rishi Sunak, continued under Keir Starmer and reflected in Andy Burnham’s promotion of Kanishka Narayan to cabinet, but he said cooperation across states is needed for any of it to matter. He acknowledged the difficulty of the timing, with the international rules-based order under severe strain.

He called for deeper engagement with the US and China alongside work with coalitions of like-minded states and the tech sector. He also argued that AI could deliver major advances in science and medicine and help some of the world’s most dispossessed people, but said the case for slowing frontier development until the risks are clear is obvious.

Why it matters

The intervention adds a senior legal voice to a debate that has largely been framed by technology companies and researchers, and it presses governments to move beyond voluntary commitments. For UK policymakers, the argument cuts against the current reliance on industry-led codes and points toward treaty-level coordination. For the wider public, it raises the question of who gets a say in how AI is shaped and who benefits from it.

What to watch

Whether the Hugging Face disclosure and the Anthropic resignation translate into concrete international talks remains the test. Hermer’s call is for urgent public debate and international coordination on frontier AI regulation, and the next signals will come from how governments respond to that pressure.

This article summarises an opinion piece and does not offer financial advice. The regulatory outlook for AI is uncertain and could change.

Written by

Katherine Wells

Katherine Wells covers forex and currency markets for StockPil, tracking the macro trends that move exchange rates.

Source: The Guardian