UK’s new Minister for Science and Technology comes to US touting Britain's AI benefits

Peter Kyle, the UK’s new Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, has been in America this week promoting British expertise in AI and other areas. He took the time to sit down with journalists on Friday to explain his plans. On Thursday, Kyle met with tech giants in Seattle and he has now brought his message …

[ShortLegs]

And there we have it. The party that claims to be for the common man (ok, peson)

"It shows the respect that governments should be showing companies that innovate on the scale that some of these companies are. I don't want to be a Secretary of State that sits in their office thinking, "I can control things by legislating and regulating from Westminster," because those days have gone when it comes to this area. We need to have a far more relationship-based approach to engaging with big tech."

Just like Blair's govt in the late 90's and early 2000s, they claim to be for the people but the second they get in power they become enthralled to business. Brown was a prime example of this.

Companies should be respectful to people and Governments, NOT the other wat round. And legislation is absolutely f**king vital to keep them in check.

What an absolute muppet.

[Wang Cores]

Nevermind the fact that big world-shaking innovations aren't artifically subsidized searching for purpose and instead "just work" in the current context because it needs to deliver.

It's soviet gigantism except now the public doesn't get an apartment or the rhetoric of a 'worker's state'.

[Zoopy]

Typo

"the common man (ok, peson)"

You accidentally added an "s" :)

[Anonymous Coward]

Done some things, not done others

A particular problem if the government want AI investment is the ridiculous cost of energy in the UK. A broken energy market that's regulated to hell and back in the name of net zero has given us appalling high industrial energy prices. A few numbers, from government's most recent data (DESNZ QEP table 5.3.1 for those who wish to check):

Industrial energy prices, p/kWh

USA 6.48

Norway 6.64

Finland 6.81

Sweden 7.65

Canada 8.69

Portugal 9.20

Korea 9.82

Turkey 13.29

Spain 13.38

Greece 15.31

Germany 17.71

France 17.84

Czech Republic 17.95

Poland 18.37

Belgium 19.25

Italy 21.82

Ireland 22.55

United Kingdom 25.85

China isn't included in the figures above, but is broadly speaking similar to US pricing.

Then again, the price is irrelevant if the supply is either constrained or unreliable, but there's another two things British politicians have sacrificed on the green altar.

[cyberdemon]

Re: Done some things, not done others

Don't worry. When Kier Starmer says "AI Benefits", he doesn't mean "AI jobs and datacentres in the UK". He means he'll give any US "AI company" access to the private data of every UK citizen, starting with the NHS and Palantir.

We don't need much energy to export all our data across the atlantic over a few ultrawideband fibre optic cables.

[tiggity]

Re: Done some things, not done others

@AC - excessive fuel prices in UK are less due to "green altar sacrifices" than to letting big business gouge the UK public.

None of the "essential utilities" should have been privatized, the UK public have paid the price in monetary terms (and in other ways e.g. rivers / coastlines awash with sewage)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Done some things, not done others

"None of the "essential utilities" should have been privatized, the UK public have paid the price in monetary terms "

So many people believe. The reality that I can attest to as I was there, was that they were privatised because they were chronically inefficient and hugely under-invested, particularly to meet incoming EU environmental regulations. And that lack of investment and management capability was down to government decisions of both political parties. I can also help you with the misguided notion that foul sewerage overflows are anything new - in fact under public ownership they were routine and at a far higher level, because government was both owner, operator and regulator. Government didn't want to borrow to invest, it didn't want to sort out the inefficiency, and it didn't want to manage a huge investment programme. At many seaside towns it was normal for all sewage to be pumped untreated into the sea, inland foul overflows were simply business as usual.

[amanfromMars 1]

Re: Done some things, not done others @Anonymous Coward

Believing all of that information you have supplied to be true, AC, and all might very easily, rightly believe it to be so, does have one asking why the electorate so regularly vote such a vast complement of Parliamentary incompetents into executive administrative offices of public command and control .... rather than refusing to continue playing their rigged game which they declare is the proper way to successfully run a democracy ...... whenever very clearly it fails and is certainly not.

Popular revolutions and/or decades of Troubles have been born of less. Is that what the future holds and what failed democracies can expect?

[collinsl]

Re: Done some things, not done others @Anonymous Coward

I'm not the original OP.

> does have one asking why the electorate so regularly vote such a vast complement of Parliamentary incompetents into executive administrative offices of public command and control

2 main reasons:

1. These are the people we are presented with to vote for. We can't nominate some random person from the street to be an MP for 6 months or whatever like the Ancient Greeks did it (to some extent).

2. All of the people who know what they're doing are off doing it, not getting into politics to talk about how to stuff it up.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Comes to US" & "We've still got it"?

We go to the US. They come to the US.

While we're at it, a pre-emptive "you take this away and then bring that back".

Gerroff my lawn.

PS 'cos that is a more substantial and believable takeaway than anything else in the piece.

[amanfromMars 1]

A Donkey Trying to Lead Lions is just like a Dead Man Walking ‽ There’s an overabundance of those.

There is stability in our politics. There is stability in the way we're managing the economy. ......Peter Kyle, the UK’s new Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology

Oh??? Well, we’ll very soon see how well or badly that pack of bare-faced lies stacks up against the truth and unfolding events over the next few quarters. Is there medication and/or counselling for those suffering from such delusions of grandeur that omit to recognise and accept the clear evidence of matters before one’s own eyes and that surround and abound all around one.

[Howard Sway]

Don't want to be a minister that thinks 'I can control things by legislating and regulating'

Well put your feet up then, because that is literally what your job is. Unless you now think it's to be some sort of cheerleader that travels the world saying "please throw some of the vast sums you're wasting on this in our direction, pretty please, mumble mumble subsidies and tax breaks..."

At some point the market is going to demand payback from all this overinvestment, and an awful lot of value is going to evaporate when big money hopes get exposed as having nothing of commercial value to show for their efforts. I fear we're reaching a point similar to the first dotcom crash when people piled billions into petfood.com and the like, with the same hopes that collapsed as the market suddenly realised they were worthless prospects.

[heyrick]

$82B in investment shows we've still got it as a nation

I would like to refer you to HS2. I would like to refer you to Birmingham Council (amongst others). I would like to refer you to a succession of NHS IT contracts.

Having some money budgeted for "getting stuff done" doesn't mean that anything useful is actually going to happen, unless you define useful as "spaffing money into the pockets of the already rich", which has been demonstrated repeatedly to be how these stories usually end - all these grand plans end up as a shitshow, but some people coined it and that's what it was really all about.

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's that important why not develop it yourself? France did. This just sounds like someone wants some credit for bringing one of the over hyped AI giants to the UK. "Oh look we're a major AI player too (just at the largesse of Silicon Valley).

[Al fazed]

Surely

if our expertise in the AI field is so good, why the expense of sending a human muppet when they could have more simply opened a chat line with the software. The output might have sounded more convincing, at least........