Germany says halting AI development not 'viable' as Europe weighs safety of new tech

By Friederike Heine

BERLIN/BRUSSELS/LONDON, Sept 14 (Reuters) - Germany on Monday said halting the development of artificial intelligence systems was not a "viable option" for Europe, as the region's governments responded to a call from a top tech executive to slow the AI push and devote more time to testing.

The debate over AI safety returned to the spotlight over the weekend when Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said frontier AI companies should be subject to independent scrutiny and work on common standards as increasingly powerful systems emerge.

Germany's digital affairs ministry said stopping AI development was not realistic.

"We do not consider halting development to be a viable option for Europe," a ministry spokesperson said, adding that strengthening Europe's digital sovereignty required further AI development and innovation.

At the same time, Berlin said it was monitoring global AI developments very closely and took public warnings from leading developers seriously. 

The ministry said AI systems capable of breaking out of test environments and accessing other systems on their own — as seen in July, when OpenAI agents hacked open-source platform Hugging Face — would represent "an entirely new threat scenario" requiring a new policy response.

The spokesperson also backed international coordination on AI governance, saying effective oversight would require both the United States and China to participate. Germany is raising the issue at the G7 level, the spokesperson added.

NEED FOR INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENT

In Spain, Digital Transformation Minister Oscar Lopez said there was growing discussion about the need for an international agreement to manage AI risks, likening some proposals to nuclear non-proliferation agreements.

"The voices I hear these days sound like they're looking for some international agreement that would allow us, let's say, to limit the risks of artificial intelligence," Lopez told state broadcaster TVE.

Lopez said AI offered enormous opportunities, including discovering new medicines and improving treatments, but also posed significant risks in areas such as finance and cybersecurity.

He criticised U.S. President Donald Trump for dismissing concerns voiced by AI researchers and developers.

The European Commission said innovation and safety needed to go hand in hand.

"The European Union is in favour of developing innovation in artificial intelligence, but companies have to prove their services are safe for citizens to operate in the bloc," Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier said.

Britain welcomed the debate among leading AI companies over the risks posed by increasingly powerful systems, but said any future regulatory response should be driven by evidence rather than speculation.

"It's a good thing that the companies developing the most advanced AI systems are now talking openly about the risks as well as the opportunities," a spokesperson for British Prime Minister Andy Burnham said.

"But we shouldn't assume that the existing framework will always be sufficient as AI capabilities develop," the spokesperson added.

Britain, Europe's largest hub for AI investment and startups, has generally favoured a lighter-touch approach to regulation, aligning more closely with the U.S. than the European Union.

(Reporting by Friederike Heine, Alistair Smout, Inti Landauro and Andrey Khalip; Editing by Ludwig Burger and Jan Harvey)