Shakil Butt asks whether the UK’ s new AI Action Plan will revolutionise public services or risk humanity’s future?
UK prime minister Keir Starmer has announced a £14 billion action plan to invest in artificial intelligence (AI) to make Britain an AI superpower to harness the technology for national renewal, revolutionising public services and boosting economic growth. The government's AI blueprint includes implementing all 50 recommendations in the AI Opportunities Action Plan, which was authored by Matt Clifford, the chair of talent investor Entrepreneur First.
The prime minister said: "We must move fast and take action to win the global race,"
It all sounds very exciting and a complete U turn from the previous Government’s position with the then prime minister Rishi Sunak stating: “We need to make sure this is done in a way that is safe and secure," discussing guardrails and regulation. While the current prime minister speaks of winning the global race, which might turn into a race to the bottom, I am concerned that it is at the cost of the human race, the only race that truly matters.
“Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should.” – Dr Ian Malcom
This classic line from Jeff Goldblum’s character in the film Jurassic Park pretty much sums up our collective position with regards to AI. In this particular scene Dr Malcom was discussing the lack of consideration taken when deciding to reintroduce dinosaurs back into the ecosystem. This was pointed out at a CIPD conference by membership director David D’Souza over five years ago, and the point has stayed with me since.
The speed of change
There has been a race to advance AI and its capability ever since the paperclip icon was introduced to assist us with Microsoft packages decades ago to where AI is being extensively used already on various platforms and workplaces.
AI is one of the areas of work my daughter is involved with. As an English and creative writing graduate with a first class honours degree, she trains AI on how to think and respond more effectively, fine tuning their responses.
Machine learning is exponential and so is only getting better and faster at enabling AI to emulate human interactions, and I have no doubt AI will lead to new jobs but also will make other jobs redundant. The good news is that we have been down this path before with previous iterations of industrial revolutions which were supposedly going to allow us all to live lives of ease and plenty due to everything being automated, which never materialised.
The reality
The truth is we have recently had recessions and a cost of living crisis, so organisations are looking for cost efficiencies to be able to produce products and deliver services. In addition to this the UK is facing a skills shortage which has been exacerbated by Brexit and anti-immigration sentiment. AI could help to speed up processes and fill some of the skills gaps, so it is understandable why embracing AI fully seems like the solution.
However, the reason for guard rails and regulation was because back in 2023 AI was being warned about being an existential threat and not just by the naysayers and doom bringers but by the ‘godfathers’ of AI like Geoffery Hinton and professor Yoshua Bengio. This was also the view from Elon Musk, although his credibility has been brought into question of late.
The problem is no-one actually knows whether AI is a gift or a trojan horse, but it doesn’t look like we are going to slow down to think this through. As always, the greatest threat to humanity is humanity itself. Let’s hope that AI does not realise this, otherwise Cyberdyne from the Terminator film franchise stops being fiction and, unlike Arnie, we won’t be back.