Short Notes On: General Political Rhetoric on AI 1. As I predicted the other day, Labour MP Darren Jones (former chief sec to PM Starmer) has decided now is a good time to speak more publicly about his views on AI. 2. I’ll unpack those in a second, but first let’s pre-empt some of the criticism that will emerge. First, Jones has been talking about this for some time. His work as Chair of the Business and Trade Committee (prev BEIS Cttee, RIP) saw him examine many businesses and their AI workings. Second, he has also been calling for Labour to make AI a central part of their offering to the British people for a few years (Guardian screenshot below), which is more than most of the chump takes that have emerged on here from his fellow Parliamentarians in the last month. I don’t agree with everything he says, but at least he has spent time thinking about articulating his ideas before writing/tweeting them. 3. So what is he pushing for? TL;DR, Jones is concerned about labour market impacts from AI. He talks of loss of jobs, loss of tax, welfare and so on. He notes the companies themselves are talking about this, but UK Govt isn’t/doesn’t look likely to at level necessary. This piece arrives as Labour Conference gets moving, and so is meant to ‘focus the mind’ in No10/11 on this. It is also a thinly veiled dig on PM Andy Burnham’s overall ‘Mr Nice Guy’ approach because Jones is implying (correctly) that not doing anything, trying to please everyone, will have immense costs, and that Burnham will need to make some trade off. 4. Overall, I think the piece’s central argument (not the Burnham slight) is actually a slightly dated and confused view, and I’m again concerned by the delta between takes that are discussed at length on here by actual experts (economists in and outside of frontier companies are often tweeting about this stuff for free! - and what’s ending up in British papers/political chat.) 5. Just in terms of actual concrete things, the UK Government has set up an AI Economics Institute (first Govt in the world to do this) modelled off our booming AISI. I expect to see some stuff coming out of it soon, and hopefully this lights a fire under some SW1 bums. 6. I agree, and have written about, the vacuum created for populist takes if you don’t have an assertive government actioning and communicating actual positive AI achievements. “We are using AI to reduce paperwork” no one cares! Means nothing. 7. The Government - and other leaders too - need to understand that this technology is being pitched on a level of almost going to the moon in terms of what it can achieve and do - “it’s going to cure all disease/transform our society!”- and THAT is what justifies some of the perceived risks. However, too often Western policymakers lack logos and critically thymos in their strategies around this. So we get bad press releases and poorly articulated concrete examples of how this technology is working/why it hasn’t quite worked yet (Apollo programme took a decade!) 8. Overall, Jones doesn’t quite articulate this correctly, but what he and other Westminster folk are struggling to say is that no Prime Minister has yet stated, in clear but comprehensive terms, what exact vision of Britain they have where AI helps it be achieved. If the whole pitch is just stuff like “AI helps us make the shit parts of Britain - long NHS queues, office admin, planning etc - marginally less shit, but by the way it also involves trade offs such as personal data being sold/huge amounts of money flowing around/potential risks to achieve this marginal gain”, that’s not really v inspiring. You are teeing yourself up for valid criticism AND invalid demagoguery.