“The thing I worry about most is humans losing capability” over the machines, said Rene Haas, Chief Executive Officer of Arm Holdings Plc, when asked what keeps him up at night when he thinks about artificial intelligence. “You need some override, some backdoor, some way that the system can be shut down.”

Haas, who was speaking to Bloomberg in a wide-ranging interview from the company's Cambridge, UK, base knows a thing or two about machines. By his estimate, 70% of the world's population touches Arm-designed products in some way. It's a reminder of the company's rare status as a UK-born global tech titan — even if it is now majority owned by Masayoshi Son's Softbank Group Corp. in Japan, and listed in New York.