That's about it, really.
Blair has obviously got at Starmer. "AI Superpower"? Well, if government has anything to do with it, AI Superpower, my arse.
Civil servants are crap at tech stuff (inter multa alia) and picking winners - look how many iterations of 'government portals' etc they go through, before eventually they get websites that actually work. Then, they put everything online and make applications for stuff self-certifying, so that the slick system they've come up with is robbed blind by scammers. We know this. Do we need to rehearse the PO scandal, NHS databases, etc etc etc?
We also know that the UK is capable of being a superpower in all sorts of techie arenas: FI cars; computer games; FinTech; ... errrr ... And we haven't jumped with both feet to hobble AI with regulations, unlike the EU. But electricity, there's the thing: the next generation of data centres will be ferocious power-hogs. The US will take this in its stride (well, maybe not California) but we are looking shaky right now: Jan 8th was nearly blackout time, and data centres can't be doing with that. Starmer has obviously been told about this one because he's muttering about SMRs - maybe he hopes the Big 7 will pay for his energy policy at the same time as gladdening his heart with multi-billion AI-related investments here.
The answer has to be: (a) facilitate it, planning-wise; (b) leave it alone; (c) buy, for government use, good products when they become available and are fully tested. But for pity's sake don't pay for the DWP to be the beta site for some piece of premature vapourware. Because that's what this all looks like.
ND
31 comments:
Doing my company accounts online, and communicating with Companies House, is a complete pain. I can just see BritishVolt Mk 2.
Maybe he's got a replacement for Reeves lined up already?
Picking winners again? Then AI = Another Inmos.
What's he going to do about the Unions? They held back Royal Mail in terms of modernising their machinery, meanwhile the train operators have systems that were outdated when kipper ties where all the rage, for similar reasons. AI will cost jobs, and I can't see the Unions just accepting that.
AI itself is very unproven, and very spotty - had Houchen on Laura Kuenssberg wittering on about it replacing coders, which is a non starter for a few more years as the quality produced is patchy at best. It is, however, absolutely brilliant at saving me writing test code.
I really need to look if I can get some filthy lucre from all this though, I've watched too many friends and ex-colleagues fill their boots. I think its maybe time my boots got some gold poured in to them.
Is it true that Starmer hasn't got an invite to Trump's inauguration?
That made me laugh.
You don't need to have the data centres in your country to do AI. My company spends millions on cloud compute but all of our servers are in Ohio as the cost of compute is very low due to cheap energy.
OT but the headline on the Times is currently "I have full confidence in Reeves, says Starmer". So she is toast then!
It might well succeed if they rescinded IR35 then they might have a chance. The 'become an expert as an employee then go contracting for a while then back to employment' was key to the UKs success In the IT sector.
Right now expert contractors can't even deduct travel / working away expenses.
Al
I'm not sure that collapsing the gird whilst hailing the glorious advent of AI makes any sense at all.
At least Labour are consistent...
So it seems.
The Empire Strikes Back.
God willing, Trump will make Starmer's life a misery. He has all the tools ... or should that be, weapons...
Ignoring the idiocy with IR35, which was created on behalf of the big out-sourcing companies who objected to ordinary people competing with them. We were already an "AI superpower" with Deep Mind. This is the company that produced AlphaGo and revolutionised the computer playing of the game of Go. Prior to that, they had programs which mastered video games without ever being told how to do so. AlphaFold for predicting protein-folding was their follow-up. Enormously innovative and important work.
Google snapped them up.
I couldn't believe the Government was so unconcerned. A leading 21st Century resource, world leading and proven. And now owned by the Americans.
They are clueless and just looking for a headline to distract from the constant chaos.
Elby - a post upcoming on "Trump's weapons" which is a sobering topic.
On IR35, it's HMRC's baby, and no government seems interested in changing it.
Wasn't that long ago Mel Stride cheerfully ignored the complaints from various groups, hopefully he'll change his tune now that the Tories would like to get back into power, not betting on it though.
OT - Biden's farewell speech, said he passes Ukraine to Trump, says they “laid the foundation for Ukraine's future.”
Now it must be said that's true, just not perhaps in the way he meant it. He (or to be fair his advisers) laid the foundations for Europe's future too, sadly.
Call me an old fashioned out-of-date has-been techy but I have my doubts about AI. And as soon as a government declares for AI you can be sure the game is up and the snakeoil salespersons are making out like bandits. AI hopes have been up and down like the lady's drawers these last 50 years.
I don't recall Robert Walpole etc backing Jaquard looms or coal mines or steam engines as a way out of slow growth. I don't suppose Gladstone worried his head about advances in Babbage's differencing engines. But pity poor Starmer, no use sending a gunboat or taking over a country, everyone would laugh, he has very few options.
Which leaves the thought would the Tories be in any better a place now - 6 months after election. They faffed around uselessly for 14 years with no credible plans for growth. I have hunted high and low, broom cupboard and under the stairs and I can't find a credible thing marked 'Tory growth'.
Growth seems to be one of those things that grows quietly in a petri dish left on a shelf. But you need a lot of them and you need an intelligent eye to look them over regularly. And there is competition, all the obvious things like AI, organic semiconductors, green aircraft already have the Americans, Chinese and Uncle Tom Cobbley crawling all over them.
Then there is hanging on to your new fangled idea, every shark in creation is looking for new fangled ideas.
As for IR35 etc it seems HMG has squeezed everyone dry. Which leaves the question of who is missing from the crusher - that Drew chap maybe? Or maybe we really do need to build Golgafrinchan Ark Ship B.
jim @ as soon as a government declares for AI you can be sure the game is up and the snakeoil salespersons are making out like bandits.
On exactly this topic, I may tell an amusing tale about the "Microprocessor Application Fund" (1980) in a day or so
According to the Sage of Kirkcaldy:
'In all countries where there is tolerable security, every man of common understanding will endeavour to employ whatever stock he can command in procuring either present enjoyment or future profit.'
'The uniform, constant, and uninterrupted effort of every man to better his condition . . . is frequently powerful enough to maintain the natural progress of things toward improvement, in spite both of the extravagance of government, and of the greatest errors of administration.’
'Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.'
I guess most of the elements of Starmers AI push come from ideas being looked into under Rishi Sunak? With a bit of socialist big state spin added. So something really similar to this AI damb squib might have been Rishi's big growth initiative?
But why would Starmer mention potholes as a use for it ?! Maybe his AI could deal with reports of unnecessary traffic cones too.
dearieme - but Adam Smith didn't forsee that the easiest way to wealth for many in the UK might be drug importation and dealing.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/jan/14/sizewell-c-cost-nuclear-power-plant-edf
"The cost of building the Sizewell C nuclear power plant in Suffolk has doubled since the plans were presented to the UK government in 2020 and could now reach close to £40bn, according to reports."
Mr Blair's 1998 decision to scrap all new nuclear build sure casts a long shadow.
In China, the experimental thorium-salt nuke on the edge of the Gobi has been running successfully six months or so, they've decided to build a power version, just 10MW.
"SubOptimal has left a new comment on the post 'AI and government: what could go wrong?':
I guess most of the elements of Starmers AI push come from ideas being looked into under Rishi Sunak? With a bit of socialist big state spin added. So something really similar to this AI damb squib might have been Rishi's big growth initiative?
But why would Starmer mention potholes as a use for it ?! Maybe his AI could deal with reports of unnecessary traffic cones too."
Better, unnecessary Prime Ministers.
For an allegedly smart bloke, Starmer's ability to complete misread us is epic. I do think he is personality disordered.
dearime
A reminder
Starmer believes the state is there to serve him
L'etat, c'est moi, as someone once said
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/09/24/state-will-take-back-control-of-peoples-lives-says-starmer/
Anyone met ANYONE who has confessed to voting for this disaster? We haven't...
I wonder what Adam Smith would make of today's world.
We have gone from nature just starting to divulge her riches to nature being more curmudgeonly and revealing only notions difficult and expensive to utilise. In Smith's day there were few big players on the world scene, today the same, along with many smaller players, just we are not among the bigger players.
The big change is the world competition for the few good resource streams. Essentially nations have become like beasts around a global watering hole. And no, Kipling was wrong, the beasts don't put their natures to one side at the watering hole - they fight and growl.
More locally the big change for the UK is a move to service industry. In our case we now have more accountants and lawyers than even the USA. Very good for a service-driven economy where others are paying for their zero-sum games. Not so good if we insist on lawyers for every jot and tittle of local accounting and administration.
In Smith's day the importation and taking of laudanum was a minor problem and the customs men were not that bothered. Today laudanum etc is big business and keeps a large proportion of our workforce gainfully employed - doing the trade and (not) stopping it. The sceptical might ponder whether the costs of stopping the trade exceed the benefits of leaving it alone. Keeps the lawyers and accountants in business, got any better ideas?
Nations have to, longer term, play to their strengths.
For the UK, while we do have some energy resources, the coal isn't particularly accessible (compared to, say, Columbia, where they can just scrape it off the ground) and the oil is high-cost (North Sea) or, for the unconventional recoverable, while there's some good geology, we're hardly talking about the Permian Basin level of reserves.
English as a mother tongue. A centuries-old case law in commerce (and a common law system of jurisprudence). An advantageous time zone. A global footprint as a result of a colonial history. These things and more led themselves to specialising in law, accounting, financial services, STEM research, IT.
If we were to try, as some suggest, to throw away all these natural advantages and, instead, try to turn ourselves into some sort of manufacturing or commodity production powerhouse, I would personally dig up the corpse of Ricardo and, after reanimating him, get him to recite his international trade theory based in comparative advantage and specialization.
@Clive: The trouble with the 'lets focus on law, accounting, financial services, STEM research, IT etc' concept of economic strategy is that it relies on someone else for all the necessities of life. When the SHTF (like it did during covid, and the Ukraine invasion) you suddenly find that those necessities become expensive if not impossible to come by at all. And when there's a global crisis is there really going to be a lot of people all over the world saying 'What I really need now is some good lawyers and accountants'?
An economy based on nothing but services is a fair weather economy. When the SHTF you need to be able to feed, clothe and shelter your population from your own resources to the maximum degree. A service economy is an attempt to make a country (to borrow from my comment on AI) into a member of the Eloi class - living a gilded life of 'high value' production, while the Morlocks elsewhere supply the 'low value' food fuel and manufactures. All great until the Morlocks decide 'No more food, fuel and goods for you'. Then your 'high value' output is useless and you starve.
The problem with all that is, if you run a country as some kind of weird “prepper economy”, sort of like the DPRK you end up as, well, as North Korea. Telling your population that you’re trying to compete with India, the Philippines, Indonesia or wherever because you want to be prepared in the event of a crisis may lure some into agreeing with your industrial policy.
But then giving them the same living standard as those countries (all of which are trying to escape the middle income trap, incidentally, by reorientation of their economies to something a little more like the UK rather than China because no-one can realistically out China China) and they’ll likely baulk at the measures required “just so you can feel safe”.
"The problem with all that is, if you run a country as some kind of weird “prepper economy”, sort of like the DPRK you end up as, well, as North Korea. "
No you don't. All you have to do is stop hindering the people who want to produce energy, food and manufactures in the UK, something that at the moment the government is actively engaged in driving abroad. The reason we don't have all those things is because of govt policy, not because they can't be produced here, and competitively too.
The country will never be self sufficient in these things so I’m not sure where the basis of your argument comes from. There’s no way the country can meet its own energy or food needs and this hasn’t been the case for a hundred years. Same with manufacturing — no country can make everything. It inevitably has to trade in some goods.
This just leaves some sort of longhouse degrowth. And there will definitely be no takers for that.
Liz Truss and Farage both commited to getting rid of IR35.
I've been at a conference this week talking about the future of AI code assurance.
It won't replace coders, but AI code, automatically quality assured, is coming very fast indeed, the first iterations are in the wild and improving rapidly.
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