UK unveils plans to mainline AI into the veins of the nation Britain's government is adopting all 50 recommendations made by a venture capitalist to use AI to drive economic recovery, without even acknowledging the resulting energy challenge this strategy likely poses. Under the AI Opportunities Action Plan, announced Monday, the administration claims that fully embracing the technology …
what a great economic strategy!
To make matters worse, the only profits from this will be offshore, and the costs will be very close to home. Hoovering up private data and sending it to the likes of Palantir, slurping up scarce clean water and chucking it out to sea, overloading baseload power supplies, spying on UK citizens, devaluing UK work with an endless stream of autogenerated drivel.. Yay, great idea Sir Kier, i'm sure this will restore confidence in Sterling
Much of that is by design. The government is trusts lobbyists who work for companies that will profit from this.
This is being done on the advice of Matt Clifford who is a founder of a "startup accelerator" who is now "focusing on AI" - hardly impartial.
Really fucking annoys me and really pisses me off. The lobbists and consultants will always say what they know you want to hear.
We had a consultant for a tender for a new software system. The one he kept recommending, he claimed he'd recommended at other companies and it was succesful. He was being overpaid and when I had my one and only meeting with him knew he was a grifter who just knew what to say to get clueless execs to believe his bullshit. I wasn't allowed to bring this up as the project manager, who was also clueless wouldn't have a bad word said about the consultant he'd choosen otherwise it would of made him look incompentant. The company suggested won the contract, they are shit and the SLAs are shit, as we all predicted. The exec is still using the same shit consultant. We're 99% sure he's getting brown envelops from the company he keeps recommending to every single person he consults for.
The Blair Institute has been peddling this for the NHS and now AI everywhere! What the AI purveyors wont say and the desperate (in this case the Government) cant acknowledge is that pretty much 'AI' is used when you need to make a decision (do I do this or that). Before implementing AI you need to understand what decision you're trying to improve, how much you can improve it, whats the cost of using AI to do this AND remain with legislative frameworks (from use of training data to explainability as in the GDPR). You also need a stack-ton of supporting infrastructure and clear understanding of your processes.
Wishing on a star is going to be an expensive exercise in buying toys that get left on the shelf, but yes, buy that Palantir stock now!
As opposed to the former set?
The political movement that led to Brexit (and indeed Trump) seems to have purged from government and its orbit anyone who has a clue how things actually work and replaced them with a bunch of chancers who cling to their childish belief that wishing will make it so.
Not that we haven't had crises before, but in the past reason has eventually prevailed. Now I'm not so sure: I see no sign the electorate is going to abandon its taste for fantasy. politics.
"This is what happens when politicians and political parties promise increasingly undeliverable stuff to get elected."
Surely the blame lies on those who believe them? Whilst I don't excuse the politicos, the underlying problem is that they're just playing to the gallery of a public wanting services like Denmark and taxes like Chad.
Other than the outstandingly stupid (perhaps 5% of the population) anyone will agree that if you want better public services you need to pay more for them, but when it comes to voting it seems that a good proportion of the 95% are willing to suspend their logical faculties and vote for lying idiots. As it happens, the current lot are a whole lot more honest and well intentioned than the carousel of thieves that we've had for the previous decade or more, but they still had to make mendacious promises on tax to get elected, and even then won only because sufficient would be Conservative voters withheld their vote in disgust at the Tories.
And yet they got another instance of the tory party. Good job they got rid of that fucking socialist Corbyn and replaced him with an accountant, eh?
You all want change, as long as there's no actual chance your life will change.
We need to address the wealth gap, but not by making me poorer!
"This is what happens when politicians and political parties promise increasingly undeliverable stuff to get elected."
And when the government has come to be mostly made up of journalists, lawyers and those who have gone into politics straight out of university.
Most of them don't have a clue about highly technical subjects such as meeting power demands and seem to think that posturing and grandstaning will solve the growing issues.
they ran up a MASSIVE debt and hid it from everyone.
The problem with that theory is that details of public finances are available to all of parliament, not just the government. If there is an alleged black hole, as Reeves claims, and they didn't notice it while they were in opposition, they're even more incompetent than they currently seem to be.
The reality is more likely to be the usual blame game, blame the "previous lot" for messing up so that the incomers can justify whatever unpopular economic dogma they espouse.
Not quite as "alleged" as your post makes out, but the bone of contention when it comes to politics is a more precise figure. Either way the Tories did leave a big hole. As per the OBR report.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2e12j4gz0o
It is fair to blame the Tories for at least £9.5bn and probably up to £16bn. After that its arguable to some degree.
I ask because, not covered in this article, is - yet again - giving access to supposedly anonymised NHS data. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jan/12/mainlined-into-uks-veins-labour-announces-huge-public-rollout-of-ai
(no, I don't trust a government that whole heartedly adopts all of the recommendations of a venture capitalist)
' the creation of a new National Data Library to "unlock" the value of public data in supporting AI development.'
That statement blatantly says public data will aggregated and sold to AI systems. It does nothing to suggest any level of privacy or opt-in for the use of data so why do we need public consultation as, obviously, if you have nothing to hide why would you worry ...?
Surely this shows how incompetent the Government are ...
It’s ongoing. I am partway through my submission in fact. Make one yourself, link is:
https://ipoconsultations.citizenspace.com/ipo/consultation-on-copyright-and-ai/
This is specifically the “should we give away the family silver to big US tech firms by relaxing copyright” question, it’s the only consultation on AI in the UK I know of. Closes 25 Feb.
This already happens, and 'anonymised' according to some data protection officers in the NHS and associated companies is a 'solved problem'. What I've come to understand is: because they wrote a policy document saying 'data will be anonymised' they think it's done and done perfectly with no chance of re-identification.
Additionally the overstretched NHS IT depts have difficulty mining their own data due to a variety of tools and database systems in use. Each with their own customizations. Which in a way does protect the NHS from anyone hoovering up data and selling it - even themselves.
I hope the government is thinking about pattern-finding and pattern-matching AI, and not LLM bullshit-generation.
I fear a tsunami of bullshit, otherwise. Perhaps even rolling power cuts: we're already close to maxing out grid capacity at certain times of peak electrical demand.
True, the only use for ChatGPT is to give me a very rough idea of how to do a powershell script (knowing full well it will be mostly wrong) but at least ChatGPT doesn't insult me for asking unlike StackOverflow.
The only other 2 uses is commenting code when lazy and telling me what a bit of code actually does because I, again, don't want to be insulted by the folks of StackOverflow.
But, the government don't appear to understand how power hungry these LLMs are. Its OK, idiot Starmer might give China back the building of the nuclear power station. China def won't put in a backdoor for the time it all goes to shit so they can make the reactor go pop. They def haven't already done this (as has been seen in the news) with America's infrastructure.
"I fear a tsunami of bullshit"
Don't worry, the last thing His Kierness wants is an election.
You might get a Thames Water of excrement (maybe a new Vulture unit of measurement) though as the water companies will claim that brown outs (pun intended) are the reason they can't be bothered to process raw sewage.
Maxing out grid capacity? Maybe where you are, round here there is often a surplus that we get to use for free...at least twice a week we get a notification telling us that energy at certain times will be free...we're with Octopus.
It's usually around 4pm to 7pm, which I think is peak time.
The problem with our grid is not the capacity, the problem with our grid is that we don't store anything...if we had proper energy storage infrastructure, we'd solve a lot of problems with the grid.
If the lights go out, Starmer's motley crew will follow very quickly afterwards.
The AI trend will fizzle out after a tonne of public money has been wasted on it. It's what governments do. Private companies will pocket the cash and exit, stage right, quietly, when it all comes to nothing. Standard form for the UK.
The government are just trying to buy some positive publicity as Brexit Britain is too broken for them to fix and the natives are getting restless.
They have a fall guy - Clifford - for when it fails, but it won't save them.
I believe Boris owns the copyright to the hollow promise, 'our plan will make Britain the world leader'.
Brazier is largely correct, but AI is no benefit, and not worth the extra cash.
People say the same about driving into Devon from Dorset.
But then Devon CC are quite open that they're only doing safety-critical road repairs. Which means only potholes that have been reported by the public and meet their "safety-critical" criteria - >40mm deep, and "the size of a dinner plate" across.
I am on the local community group committee. We report pot holes to the Hertfordshire county councillor who just tells us that it is policy to not fill/repair them until they are big enough:
"Overall for HCC potholes it’s 5cm in depth and 30cm in width – at the higher end as per the article sent through, and of footways for trip hazards its 2cm."
So: how is AI going to improve that ?
Yet more policy that only makes sense through the lens of someone getting what they paid for.
A lot of it going around - no clear national interest for it but *someone* is going to make a stack off it and there seem to be plenty willing to help it happen.
Icon for your wallet getting lifted to pay for it all.
Under the AI Opportunities Action Plan, announced Monday, the administration claims that fully embracing the technology will boost productivity by 1.5 percent a year, gains said to be worth up to £47 billion ($57 billion) each year.
How much was HS2 supposed to add to the economy each year? And look how well that's turned out!
Yep but HS2 was a Tory idea to line the pockets or someone's mates.
"Under the AI Opportunities Action Plan, announced Monday, the administration claims that fully embracing the technology will boost productivity by 1.5 percent a year, gains said to be worth up to £47 billion ($57 billion) each year."
I call bullshit on that figure.
If you were to argue "But we can use it more for reports". Yes, they won't be accurate and all that will happen is you're get grifter directors, already overpaid and incompetant. Still getting the same pay and using AI to do all their reports for them and spending the rest of the day playing golf.
Not just HS2. And Brexit goes without saying. Has there ever been a fad or bandwagon our governments haven't jumped upon with the promise it will Make Great Britain Great Again, which has actually delivered anything of usefulness?
I am struggling to think of any substantial government project which came in on time, on budget, delivered the returns we were told it would.
Whilst Crossrail was ridiculously late, and ridiculously over-budget, thanks to being run as a load of projects, rather than a programme, it's exceeded all expectations in terms of usage. Even with the crap infrastructure west of Padders. So that's success on 1 out of 3 of your criteria :-)
The last paragraph is baiting fear of missing out.
It would be more informative to compare how AI is and can be used across the Atlantic.
In US, anything goes conditional on your legal budget.
In exchange for a fee you pay, all your data is now theirs, for an ephemeral benefit to be realized somewhere, somewhen.
In EU, any mention of AI in a funding proposal triples the vetting, where you need to carefully show that training data is secured, results are reproducible, and harm is defined in the context of the application (as it should).
The 100$/month is the tax vendors now charge to desperately recoup their datacenter investments (see recent Microsoft dark pattern of increasing subscription by 40% for the pleasure). It is not a function of availability or market demand.
LLMs are available open source and for free, even on CPU. No tax needed.
Keir should concentrate on just keeping the lights on at this point, instead of committing to building vast data centres that will consume power which the UK has precious little capacity to provide.
The example AI use case mentioned in his speech gives an idea of just how out of touch the government is....
"The plan also gives other examples for how AI could be used - for example to inspect roads and spot potholes around the country."
Councils know exactly where the damn potholes are when claims from angry motorists arrive in their inbox for car repairs! Locating them is not the issue, it's getting them fixed that is the problem.
Out of touch not least because such a thing already exists, based on tried and tested image recognition tech which runs on a smartphone, not gigawatt-consuming LLMs.
> a risk that the impact of AI may be far less than expected.
If the government gets involved we can upgrade that from an expectation to a certainty.
"Hello ChatGPT, my name is Kier. How can a government rapidly expand it's AI thingies?"
Hi Kier. I think you should award a huge consulting contract to OpenAI. I can arrange that for you, for a small fee
Theres no way we can meet our net zero carbon plans if we allow AI data centers to be built in the UK or anywhere.
We should put a stop to AI until it can be implemented without using so much computing power and energy. There should only a few AI centers for research until the energy issue is sorted.
It's crazy how the Government has jumped on the AI bandwagon. More waste of tax payers money, when there's more urgent things to spend our tax payers money on like sorting out social care.
It's crazy how the Government has jumped on the AI bandwagon. More waste of tax payers money, when there's more urgent things to spend our tax payers money on like sorting out social care.
I am wondering how long it will take for everyone to figure this out? I am sure the media won't be reticent in presenting such a perspective, that it's throwing money at problems we don't have, won't fix the one's we do have, that there's no firm foundation for what's being promised.
And what happens to Starmer and Labour when everyone realises the emperor is not wearing clothes?
Meta, the smallest of the FAANGs, will spend $26B this year on AI data centers. The idea the perennially bankrupt UK government (or any other European government, or even the EU) can play with the big boys is completely delusional. It would make a lot more sense to fund a few millions’ worth of PhDs at Cambridge to find ways to train AI more efficiently without the insane Capex.
were fucking awful but this is just stupid. Not only moving to using AI but also partnering with China. Look at Chinese human rights abuse, why partner with them? Look at their abuse of the Belt and Road system.
It was already being used at the DWP I believe to decide if people should get benefits or not and had to be stopped because it just pretty much saying no to everyone.
We used it in a meeting, it took notes. It then, in those notes said I said something that was never actually said.
Years or even only a year later that could be used in court "Mr Jones said this while on a Teams meeting. He denies ever saying it but CoPilot said he did so it must be true. On that note, send him to 20 without parol".
Its all fucked up.
Starmer needs to be replaced. He's just a posh lawyer who, apparently, has never really been interested in politcs. Have they never seen I, Daniel Blake. Not AI related but something similar will happen with AI.
"Why did Mrs Jones die?" Oh because Ted used CoPilot to summerise her e-mail. The problem is it totally missed the part where it said she was vunerable and really needed support and Ted never bothered to check. Starmer told us we HAVE to use all this AI shit.
We've been here before, the "government led" approach didn't work in the 1980s and I doubt it will work now:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvey
----------
The 1980s saw the creation of the Alvey programme (1983–1987), the first large-scale R&D project involving AI in Britain. ... The launch of the Alvey programme was a response to the creation of the Japanese Fifth Generation Computer programme in 1982. ... However, by the late 1980s, the UK’s IT sector had built up a considerable trade deficit, and by the early 1990s it was considered unlikely that the Alvey programme would lead to any substantive commercial returns. ... It should be noted that a lack of clarity in terms of definitions and objectives seems to have plagued the field right back to its origins in the 1950s. This makes tracing the evolution of the AI field in the UK a difficult task.
The Alvey programme was a five-year collaborative R&D programme in IT which began in 1983. It was funded by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), the Science Engineering Research Council (SERC) and the Ministry of Defence (MoD). In total the programme cost £350 million (approximately £1 billion today), of which £200 million came from the Government and the remainder from industry.
... the strategic objectives were not achieved. By 1980, the UK IT sector had a trade deficit of £300 million, and while the directors of the programme projected it would reach £1 billion by 1990, in reality it was surpassed as early as 1984.606 Although it was expected that in the long-term the programme’s work could lead to commercial returns, by the early 1990s it was considered that these expectations were unlikely to be met.
The idea of ‘AI winters’ in the UK obscures important conclusions that can be drawn from the experience with the Alvey programme. Funding for particular R&D projects does seem to have spiked and dropped at particular points, the latter often occurring after disillusionment had set in. Yet the Alvey programme’s results and implementation problems show that lessons from the 1970s were not properly considered, and that projects were set up without a clear understanding of how commercial and ‘public good’ objectives would be achieved and sustained. This was the case especially in terms of skills, and developing sustainable SMEs. Furthermore, the UK also neglected existing assets, including a highly skilled female workforce.
----------
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201719/ldselect/ldai/100/10018.htm
Yes, I really am that old that I was dragged into the bandwagon-jumping in the '80s - I'm just wrinklier and even more cynical about it now than I was then. Hopefully this time round I'll be proved wrong. Or then again, perhaps not.
"Perhaps recognizing there might be a latent problem, the government says it will set up a dedicated "AI Energy Council" chaired by the Science and Energy Secretaries. This will work with energy companies "to understand the energy demands and challenges" of its AI plans."
Ah yes, set up another talking shop! That'll resolve the issues in no time...
I had the misfortune to hear some of Keir "Snake-Oil Salesman" Starmer's over-excited speech on the radio, and it certainly sounded like it had been written by dear Steve Bong. Unfortunately no whalesong in the background, I guess the budget doesn't stretch to that these days…
Quote: "...AI to drive economic recovery..."
Plenty of "informed comment" about electrical energy.....so far so good!
But no mention of likely side-effects (did I say "side-effects"???):
- NHS data (from Palantir?) used for training AI models?
- PII used widely (in contravention of GDPR) for training AI models?
.....and then after those real issues.....who OWNS the AI models:
- citizens who have had their medical records slurped?
- citizens whose GDPR rights have been abused?
- Palantir?????
- Amazon????
- Microsoft????
- Google????
I think we should be told!!
"… fully embracing the technology will boost productivity by 1.5 percent a year …"
What does that mean, and from whence does the estimate of the benefit arise?
According to www.investopedia.com -
Productivity measures output per unit of input.
Economists see productivity growth as essential for gains in wages, corporate profits, and living standards.
The calculation for productivity is output by a company divided by the units used to generate that output.
Productivity in the workplace refers simply to how much work is done over a specific time period.
AND
Economic productivity is calculated as a ratio of gross domestic product (GDP) to hours worked. Labour productivity is analysed by sector to identify trends in job growth, wages, and technological advances.
Productivity — regardless of whether the concept is applied to an individual enterprise or to a national economy — refers to a limited range of human activities. Moreover, it may not be assumed that increases of 'productivity', in either sense, improve the quality of life for the generality of people.
However, the term is powerful in the hands of one-dimensional thinkers such as executive politicians and of the financial interests owning them.
Whilst not seeking to knock AI per se, there is no convincing relationship yet established between the use of AI and the capacity for production of tangible goods and services. Indeed, some believe AI, carelessly used, will have business 'externalities' deleterious to populations as a whole. The drive for profit maximisation, the mantra of business schools, already leads to conveniently ignored externalities.
For 'intangibles', these being most of the output from financial centres such as the City of London, AI will be as seductive as 'derivatives', 'rehypothecation', and instability-inducing algorithmic trading. Indeed, the last-mentioned seems well suited for delegation to AIs. Ironically, a tranche of grossly overpaid 'traders' and 'analysts' will be put out to grass: the small fry of Neo-Liberal financialisation will discover their true station in life.
For 'intangibles', these being most of the output from financial centres such as the City of London, AI will be as seductive as 'derivatives', 'rehypothecation', and instability-inducing algorithmic trading. Indeed, the last-mentioned seems well suited for delegation to AIs. Ironically, a tranche of grossly overpaid 'traders' and 'analysts' will be put out to grass: the small fry of Neo-Liberal financialisation will discover their true station in life. .... Long John Silver
Hmmm? ..... Methinks those maybe starting to realise they desperately need to rapidly discover a new station in life, in order to try to escape being held responsible and both morally and criminally charged accountable for all manner of past and present day national and international woes and serial missteps which can very likely result in them never being able to see grass again, are grossly overpaid 'central bankers’ and supporting supported ‘politicians’ ........ although that realisation would be wholly dependent on such subjects having more than just a modicum of smarter intelligence which has never been displayed as them possessing and able to use before.
It is/They are sure to be the prime targets for fundamental radical change and repurposing for IT and AI Virtual Machinery.
>>Moreover, it may not be assumed that increases of 'productivity', in either sense, improve the quality of life for the generality of people.
Well, quite. By that definition, maximum productivity is achieved by having only one (very busy) person in the whole coutnry actually in work, achieving a country'sworth of production using a mass of automated systems - while the generality of people starve.
Perhaps the quality of life for the generality of people could be improved if some of the profits from that one person's work were redistributed to the starving by some mysterious mechanism which isn't part of the productivity calculation - we could call such a system a "welfare state".
But current ideology suggests that the one person in work would never sign up for such a deal - after all, where's their incentive?
...apart from turning over all the data to wtf knows who? Thiel obviously but probably anyone else with enough cash, never mind how dodgy.
The AI side will never happen because there is ZERO probability of bringing enough generation capacity onto the grid before 2030 to do anything significant. Not with the projected increase in heatpumps/EVs & not when the rest of the world is competing for the same resources.
In addition the UK price for electricity is near enough double that of some European countries so why in the name of sanity would anyone site here unless there's MASSIVE subsidies paid - every year.
As the last few days have shown (to those paying attention), the UK is pretty much at the limits of existing generation capacity when the wind doesn't blow. There's no magic leccy tree to wish this away - it'll take decades of sustained public investment, which no govt has supplied for anything other than possibly nuclear weapons in the last 60 years.
Welcome to the real world you PPE fucktards.
The UKGBNI government unveiling plans planning to mainline AI into the veins of the nation is no more than just more of the atypical pie in the sky, sugar tomorrow type vapourware which established political class puppets and their muppets have spouted since forever in order to try to secure and render to themselves a leading advantage in fields in which they have extremely limited virtual knowledge and zero practical mastery and are no more than just extensions that mimic predatory parasites and wannabe buccaneering pirates ‽
Well, ... that is what AI knows about the unravelling situation.
What do you think ... and do you want to disagree and argue with others disputing such a fact is a current and present reality for future Remote Anonymous Autonomous Media betatesting?
incharge. Then I give my advice and am ignored. A lowely, low paid engineer. The overpaid consultant comes along, says what they want to hear and gets the praise. We're all still there in the corner muttering "But this is going to take a MASSIVE amount of energy the UK doesn't have and you're supposed to be going green. The consultant doesn't actually know what they are talking about they just know how to sell their shit so they get paid".
Years later "We've learned lessons from the failure of the AI implementation. We are greatful for all the work our consultant has done but they have no moved on. What was that? Did your engineers warn you? Erm...we have other engineers?"
Cunts.
According to my colleagues at The Hartree Centre at Sci-Tech Daresbury (one of the world's leading computing centres), the acronym 'AI' is misleading. The reality is that it is merely enhanced machine learning. Real AI requires the ability to create - something these current engines cannot achieve. It's a great wheeze for politicians (who know nothing at all about the subject) and likewise, journalists who lack the ability or will to fact check. 'Real' AI is at least 30 years away, despite the inaccurate and misleading hype.
All this AI revolution actually is, is giving planning permission for a few bit barns for US companies. It will result in a few thousand construction workers being temporarily taken away from house building, and result in a handful of permanent security and maintenance jobs.
While the companies put in the investment for the bit barns, the vast majority of which is purchasing equipment from US hardware companies, with only a small percentage in building materials from the UK, the UK will be left with the cost of providing all the electrical requirements with an energy industry already at breaking point. Luckily the government has designated bit barns as critical national infrastructure, so they will keep their lights on, while those lovely smart meters selectively blacks out homes and other businesses when the ever increasing proportional of renewables fails to deliver.
On the AI usage side, laughable headlines about pot hole detection, but of course no money to actually fix them pretty much sums up the lack of priorities. In reality all it will be used for is paying the increased AI premiums on Microsoft subscription services. Working from home civil servants will be able to get away with spending even less time generating useless paper work, and productivity will continue to decline.
TLDR; spend billions, get bullshit, accelerate decline.
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