Fighting fire with fire? Plan to make UK the world leader in AI.

“So nothing underhand or conspiratorial about aany of it. As I said Keir Starmer is talking tosh, he is talking the talk, but not walking the walk.”

I will agree with that until I see evidence that it is more than talk

Lathyrus3

I called the booking system of a hotel chain to ask if the Soa supplied robes.

Twenty rephrased questions later the A1 system still could not understand my question although it had given me a lot of I nfirmation about the Spa and dressing requirements for the formal dinner.

Several requests to rate how helpful the system had been and a bunch of apologies that it couldn’t help.

🙄

You didn’t fit in with the system, the system rules!.

Elegran There is no conspiracy. It is common knowledge. American companies in particlular invest over here to make best use of our excellent technological skills - and take the intellectual knowledge and material back to the USA copyrighted and pateneted there.

Keir Starmer mentioned 7 companies in his speech. All are foreign owned or foreign financed..

Wayve is a UK company, but when they needed money it was Microsoft and Nvidia who investedthea £1 billion they neededwww.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crgypzg4edvo Wayve are now, essentially foreign owned and run. Synthesia is a joint US/UK company, Blackstone is an American company. MistralAI is a French company with its HQ in Paris, OpenAI, , Anthropic and Scale are all US companies.

Not one of these companies is British owned and British financed. We are doing, yet again, what we have done throughout the electronic revolution. Developed the technology and then sold it on to foreign owned companies to exploit and make the money.

So nothing underhand or conspiratorial about aany of it. As I said Keir Starmer is talking tosh, he is talking the talk, but not walking the walk.

I called the booking system of a hotel chain to ask if the Soa supplied robes.

Twenty rephrased questions later the A1 system still could not understand my question although it had given me a lot of I nfirmation about the Spa and dressing requirements for the formal dinner.

Several requests to rate how helpful the system had been and a bunch of apologies that it couldn’t help.

🙄

I’ve called the GP twice recently after speaking to reception, a call was booked and I spoke to a doctor, described the problem, he asked a few questions, in one case an online prescription, in the other a referral.

He was just going through a list of routine choices according to my symptoms, it could have been done by an AI computer, no doubt will be in the future

Preplanned not replanned! Completely different meaning.

Monica - You say "There was no discussion about how expansion in the industry is going to be financed, so that when AI companies want to make that jump from medium to big time, which with any company, usually requires a big injection of funds, how we will ensure that the funding is in the UK. As it is all he did was list foreign companies making big investments in this country.

Why are they doing this? They are doing this to make sure that they can ensure that all the developments in the AI industry made in this country are registered with foreign companies, who will export the profits and when the time is right move everything back to their home country and their, by then well trained home workers.

That sounds as though you believe that there will be a replanned deliberate attempt to make these things happen.

(I didn't take you for such a conspiracy theorist! )

As an optimist, and one who believes that Keir Starmer is genuinely trying to do the best he can for the UK, I think he will tbe taking steps to ensure that they don't. It is up to all those who fear the possibilty of us losing control of all the developlment that we will be working hard to achieve is NOT claimed by global organisations based elsewhere. This is still a democracy, despite efforts by some to change that.

Whatever AI package the NHS buy into let’s all hope it’s (a) not bought just the cheapest and (b) it joins up to other sectors. Our procurement of NHS systems is fragmented and abysmal.

It certainly won't be companies like ICL, which was always known as It Can't Last in the trade. (IBM was It's Better Money). I think what we will see is increased inward investment, some in existing UK companies, some establishing and enlarging overseas companies, using the established expertise in Cambridge, Oxford, Imperial, The Alan Turing Institute, to name but a few.
If the UK is already the third largest hub in the world for A1, then this is not something that is starting from scratch. I am not sure why anyone would expect it to be entirely home-grown.

Wyllow3

No A1 can ever replace the warmth and need for other human beings!

You’re not going to be able to have direct physical contact with AI but there is no reason why AI cannot be programmed to show emotion or any other kind of emphasis in any communication written or verbal
The call centre workers we have today are trained to respond in a certain way according to your responses, you can hear them clicking on their keyboards to find the next computer prompt on the screen.

I’m certain AI will be prominent in all our lives directly or indirectly, companies and local authorities will use it to improve efficiency. How the UK benefits from the development of systems I have doubts, I’m pretty sure the hardware and operating systems will be foreign just like computer systems or social media today. I do not foresee hardware or independant operating systems being developed in the UK.
Will users in the UK will programme those systems to suit their application, or maybe just choose from a menu of options offered.

No A1 can ever replace the warmth and need for other human beings!

I’m interested in howAI saves social workers time on admin. I used to have my admin person, she typed records and reports I put in tape, took all my phone calls, was ace at calming distressed people on the phone or office call ins. And she did my filing. Then the brave new world arrived, no admin support we did our work and all the admin.
We lost more than good supportive colleagues -I hope AI does reduce admin demands and free up sw time for social work but no AI could replace our smashing admin team

Beeches

We’re the third largest hub in the world for AI innovation so it’d be insane not to throw everything at it as a key industry of excellence to both sell to the world and create jobs here

Except that is just the problem. we are not going to throw everything iat it so that it becomes a key industry.

There was no discussion about how expansion in the industry is going to be financed, so that when AI companies want to make that jump from medium to big time, which with any company, usually requires a big injection of funds, how we will ensure that the funding is in the UK. As it is all he did was list foreign companies making big investments in this country.

Why are they doing this? They are doing this to make sure that they can ensure that all the developments in the AI industry made in this country are registered with foreign companies, who will export the profits and when the time is right move everything back to their home country and their, by then well trained home workers.

This is what happened to our world leading computer hardware industry in the 1970s and our ground breaking software/AI companies in the 2010s. If this speech is the best Starmer can offer, it will happen to the AI industry in the late 2020-30s

FGT Thank you for finding that. What publication was it in?

Beeches

We’re the third largest hub in the world for AI innovation so it’d be insane not to throw everything at it as a key industry of excellence to both sell to the world and create jobs here

Absolutely, we need to back these efforts, I don't really even think its "party political", we cant afford not to go down this route.

Best to encourage our grandchildren to become hairdressers, musicians, yoga teachers and plumbers.

FriedGreenTomatoes2

I think this comment taken from an American publication rather confirms your view of things MOnica:

“The Brits Bet On Big Data”

Britain is looking to get in on that AI action – a little late, but better than never. On Monday, the country’s Labour government outlined its “pro-innovation” approach to regulating the AI. Reading between the lines, that means something like, “We’re worried about lagging behind the AI race so we’ll just remove as many guardrails as we can in the hopes that our dying/dead empire will rekindle its power with the help of computer brains,” but that doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as nicely.

Interestingly, the AI strategy didn’t contain any details on the government’s plans to actually fund AI research, but it did say that Downing Street wants to build a national supercomputer to increase the U.K.’s computing power. It also said that the government will set up “growth zones” for AI developments with “streamlined” approval processes, especially for power access. Possibly most concerningly, British AI will be fed CCTV footage from across the nation to, uh, “inspect roads” and report potholes to authorities. Yup, AI is even going to take away your pothole-reporting privileges.”

I was bewildered by stuff like the pothole issues until I fed the quote into google and found the source is a USA satirical online magazine called the The Daily Pnut with 3 employees and intriguing financing.

We’re the third largest hub in the world for AI innovation so it’d be insane not to throw everything at it as a key industry of excellence to both sell to the world and create jobs here

Yes, I think so too. We have to take this route.

David49

AI is going to affect us all soon enough, my BIL is a computer geek, using Chat GPT we asked it several questions and it came up with quite an essay each time, the facts were pretty much those from other sources online. Probably largely open source material.

Other AI systems could be trained to be biased in whatever direction, indeed we could have multiple systems all with biased information. Collecting facts interpreting them in whatever direction according to the training, these facts can be applied to any decision making process. I’m sure they could write a novel given a couple of hours.

Why do we need humans at all to make decisions, last year we stayed at hotel with unmanned reception and a computer generated receptionist we asked questions and received the appropriate answers, scanned IDs, signed the computer screen and the key popped out

Is this the future for everything?.

Our grandchild loaded records for last year into chat GPT to ascertain through a list of questions how the profits were as compared to prior years with prior costs, inflation, etc. Easily yielded significant detail which I printed out for this year. Quite a small example. I think the PM's plan is valid.

I think this comment taken from an American publication rather confirms your view of things MOnica:

“The Brits Bet On Big Data”

Britain is looking to get in on that AI action – a little late, but better than never. On Monday, the country’s Labour government outlined its “pro-innovation” approach to regulating the AI. Reading between the lines, that means something like, “We’re worried about lagging behind the AI race so we’ll just remove as many guardrails as we can in the hopes that our dying/dead empire will rekindle its power with the help of computer brains,” but that doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as nicely.

Interestingly, the AI strategy didn’t contain any details on the government’s plans to actually fund AI research, but it did say that Downing Street wants to build a national supercomputer to increase the U.K.’s computing power. It also said that the government will set up “growth zones” for AI developments with “streamlined” approval processes, especially for power access. Possibly most concerningly, British AI will be fed CCTV footage from across the nation to, uh, “inspect roads” and report potholes to authorities. Yup, AI is even going to take away your pothole-reporting privileges.”

Louella12

The UK is third behind US and China with regard to the most advanced countries in AI.

So maybe Starmer has got it right.

And I read an article recently that explained why Brexit will turbo boost the UK aspirations on this subject. A real benefit!

I do not think anyone has suggested that we should be doing anything other than pursuing opportunities in AI to make the most of our lead, but having now read the full transcript of keir Starmers speech, I go back to my original belief, that it is all gas and no gaiters.

It is full of telling us what AI can do, all the wonderful changes it will make, but then there is a whole list of foreign companies investing in AI in the UK, no talk of British companies, No talk of government money, later, if not possible now.

The Foreign companies are over here to make the most of our highly talented researchers, - and then they will export the expertise and the profits back to their own countries to make the most of it.

Since the computer industry developed after the war, the UK has been an industry leader - then when all the reaerch is done the companies have been bought up by foreign companies. The big British firm ICL was bought up by a Japanese company
Autonomy, a big software/AI company was sold to the Americans and is now owned by Canadians.

The main reason these companies are sold overseas is because they cannot get the finance in the UK to help them jump from growing start-up/medium sized company to the big player.

I can see nothing in Starmers speech about how he s going to address the biggest stumbling block to industry growth in the UK. I am not talking about government money but working with the big banks and finance resourcers in this county to make sure that when AI companies get to take-off size, they ger home financing and can grow in this country, and not have to sell themselves off to Americans or the Japanese, or even Chinese, because they can provide finance and the Uk cannot.

When I was at school I read EM Forster’s book The Machine Stops published in 1909. It’s worth a read. It looks like what was a work of science fiction could become true.

AI is going to affect us all soon enough, my BIL is a computer geek, using Chat GPT we asked it several questions and it came up with quite an essay each time, the facts were pretty much those from other sources online. Probably largely open source material.

Other AI systems could be trained to be biased in whatever direction, indeed we could have multiple systems all with biased information. Collecting facts interpreting them in whatever direction according to the training, these facts can be applied to any decision making process. I’m sure they could write a novel given a couple of hours.

Why do we need humans at all to make decisions, last year we stayed at hotel with unmanned reception and a computer generated receptionist we asked questions and received the appropriate answers, scanned IDs, signed the computer screen and the key popped out

Is this the future for everything?.

The UK is third behind US and China with regard to the most advanced countries in AI.

So maybe Starmer has got it right.