With AI hype cooling, PM hopes the technology will boost his ‘efficiency’ mission
You’d be forgiven for thinking your AI was hallucinating.
The last government hastily convened an “AI safety summit” over fears AI could destroy civilisation.
The latest has just announced a plan that “mainlines AI into the veins of this enterprising nation”.
All that has really happened is the hype around AI has cooled – and with it have the comparisons to Terminator.
Even the people making the largest, most powerful AIs seem to still be figuring out what they’re good for.
The economic realities of training ever-larger AI models and paying for the hardware and energy to power them is another factor.
To be fair to the previous government, it’s main interest in AI was also potential for economic growth – but given the mood at the time, it had to be circumspect with language.
Not so for Keir Starmer.
And, with an agenda geared more towards efficiency, public-sector improvement and stimulating UK industry, AI fits his mission well.
Complex algorithms are well-suited to repetitive, tedious admin tasks that take up too much of our teachers’, nurses’ or tax officers’ time.
AI can also see patterns or solve problems in large data-sets too unwieldy for human brains to manage well.
Cutting NHS waiting lists, discovering new drugs from huge patient databases or simply freeing up teachers’ or nurses’ time to do their real jobs are all attractive to politicians.
As are the highly skilled, well-paid jobs in a sector in which the UK is already strong.
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It’s a tricky road however. It will take more than a plan to encourage more big tech companies to grow or invest in the UK.
Risky too – the NHS and projects like UK Biobank are the largest single source of patient-level healthcare data in the world.
They are immensely attractive to big tech companies fast running out of real information on which to train their ever-hungry AI models.
How to make such data available in a way that benefits his mission without AI taking over some of the UKs most valuable, and most private resources, is Keir Starmer’s challenge.