Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, has told ministers to step up work on seizing the opportunities of artificial intelligence in order to save money, boost Britain’s sluggish growth rate and reboot failing public services.
John Glen, Hunt’s deputy at the Treasury, has been charged by the chancellor with drawing up a report ahead of the Autumn Statement on raising public service productivity, with a focus on accelerating the rollout of AI.
Meanwhile Steve Barclay, the health secretary, said the technology could be used to transform the NHS by increasing its productivity without requiring staff to work harder.
Hunt hopes that, by boosting growth and saving money in the public sector, he can find some fiscal room for tax cuts before a 2024 general election. However, time is running out. The Treasury wrote to ministers last week to remind them of the need to find efficiency savings, while Hunt’s allies have said Glen is pushing ministers to speed up the AI rollout.
The potential for an AI revolution has become the principal preoccupation of prime minister Rishi Sunak and Hunt in recent weeks, as they seek to break a cycle of low growth and high taxes.
On Sunday, Sunak announced the appointment of Ian Hogarth, a tech investor and entrepreneur, as chair of the government’s foundation-model task force, which will look at developing AI.
Hogarth will also play a leading role in the first global AI summit, to be hosted by Sunak in the UK in December, which was announced by the prime minister alongside President Joe Biden at the White House earlier this month.
Chloe Smith, the science and technology secretary, told the FT last week that the summit would be a crucial moment and she expected world leaders to attend alongside industry experts.
Hogarth’s task force will lead research into AI safety to help develop safe and reliable foundation models — the general-purpose AI systems trained on massive data sets which can be applied to tasks across the economy.
Downing Street said it would be modelled on the successful vaccine task force which was set up in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, and would be backed with an initial £100mn of government funding.
Sunak said on Sunday: “The more artificial intelligence progresses, the greater the opportunities are to grow our economy and deliver better public services. But with such potential to transform our future, we owe it to our children and our grandchildren to ensure AI develops safely and responsibly.”
Sunak believes Britain can lead in the safe but minimal regulation of AI, taking what one minister called “a less draconian” approach than that likely to be adopted by the EU. Hunt is also a zealous advocate of AI.
However, Sajid Javid, the former chancellor, warned last week that Sunak would have to put far more money into the sector, arguing that the £900mn allocated for a new supercomputer to support AI was too feeble.
Meanwhile Barclay has told colleagues that “we need to shift the sense that productivity is telling people to work harder”, and wants to use technology to remove NHS bottlenecks and treat conditions earlier.
Last week at an NHS conference he singled out “the rapid developments in AI” and said that, as an example, his department was exploring “how we can use AI to improve patient safety in maternity services”.
Smith told the FT: “In fields like AI we think there’s a unique role the UK can play that builds on our existing strengths but draws on some of the differences from some of the larger blocs.”