Bank of England and US Government Probe AI Kill Switches to Safeguard Financial Markets

Bank of England deputy governor Sarah Breeden said the central bank is studying kill‑switch mechanisms that could halt trading if autonomous AI systems behave erratically. She highlighted that existing regulation may not cover “agentic” AI, and the Bank is working with the ECB, Bundesbank and the Bank for International Settlements to simulate and design guardrails such as circuit‑breakers for AI‑driven trading.

In the United States, the Trump administration has placed export controls on Anthropic’s Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models and limited access to OpenAI’s GPT‑5.6, prompting a market shift toward decentralized AI projects. Crypto tokens linked to decentralized AI platforms, such as Bittensor’s TAO, rose about 30% after the restrictions.