Ed Davey to Call for Global Pause on Superintelligent AI

The UK would become the proposed home of an international AI safety agency, while countries would be asked to pause development of superintelligent AI under a plan Ed Davey is expected to present in Brighton. The Liberal Democrat leader is framing the issue as one that cannot be settled by a small group of powerful players.

Davey is expected to call for a global pause on developing superintelligent AI in his Liberal Democrat conference speech. He would pair that demand with a global, nuclear-style non-proliferation treaty aimed at superintelligent AI, bringing two international proposals into the same policy intervention.

A proposed institution for international oversight

The proposed agency would be modeled on the International Atomic Energy Agency and headquartered in the UK. That makes the speech more than a call to slow development: Davey is also putting forward a permanent international body as part of his response to the technology.

We didn’t leave the atom bomb to a few billionaires to police themselves.

Ed Davey, in planned remarks reported ahead of the Liberal Democrat conference

The dispute is over who holds the power

Davey is expected to argue that AI governance should not be left to wealthy technology leaders and governments in California and Beijing. His case is therefore not only for tighter limits on superintelligent AI, but for a wider group of countries to shape the response through shared institutions.

The three parts of the plan address different stages of that argument: a pause would seek to halt development, a treaty would set an international non-proliferation framework, and the agency would give the UK a proposed base for international AI safety work. Davey is presenting them together rather than as separate domestic measures.

For now, all three remain expected proposals in a planned conference speech, not policies already in force. The immediate test is whether Davey’s call can move the debate from voluntary decisions by companies and individual governments toward a coordinated global response.