Satya Nadella says AI models need an 'emergency brake' and should be treated as compromised

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella set out his views on AI safety in a long post on X on Saturday 10 October 2026, TechCrunch reports. He wrote that "We can't treat Super Intelligence as a set of nested black boxes and simply accept or reject its recommendations, answers, and actions," and that it is time to reassess the "trust architecture" of AI. According to the report, his approach means separating the model from the harness that runs its work, keeping controls and safeguards outside the model, recording "every meaningful model action" with "tamper-proof human readable evidence", and making sure "an authorized person" can always pause or shut down a model mid-task. "We must assume a model is compromised and contain it from the start," he wrote. "Think of it like an emergency brake." These are his opinions, not a Microsoft product or policy announcement.