AI exceeds the Industrial Revolution – it can’t be left to tech bros: UK AI Minister
Key Points
- AI minister Kanishka Narayan said Britain must not leave AI to tech bros
- He said AI’s impact rivals and partly exceeds the Industrial Revolution
- A £13,000 government AI test found 500 new public sector vulnerabilities
- Narayan hinted at an AI announcement in next week’s Budget
- Every US AI lab has asked the UK’s AI Security Institute to test models
AI minister Kanishka Narayan said the British public must take charge of AI rather than tech bosses. “The fundamental thing is that the British public and democracy has to assert power rather than leave it to tech bros and oligarchs,” says AI Minister Kanishka Narayan.
Narayan became the UK’s first cabinet minister for AI when Prime Minister Andy Burnham appointed him in July.
“It is comparable and in some ways exceeds the Industrial Revolution,” said Narayan. He said Britain must avoid repeating the mistakes of the Industrial Revolution, when the country benefited overall but the transition caused severe hardship for many people.
Building AI in Britain
Narayan said that dealing with AI requires both regulation and building capability and capacity within the state.
He added that Britain must build AI domestically so the country can shape working conditions, rather than leaving development to other nations.
“We need to build technology to defend ourselves and to grow ourselves so we have leverage internationally – we’re now currently totally reliant on other countries for essential bits of technology,” said Narayan.
The government recently used frontier AI models across Whitehall to check public sector systems for cybersecurity issues.
“We only spent £13,000 on it – we discovered 500 new vulnerabilities. These are novel vulnerabilities that we discovered in significant areas of the public sector,” said Narayan.
A million ways to lose
Narayan’s comments come after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said Britain overthinks things too much, which is keeping it behind in the tech race. Huang was speaking at the sidelines of an event in London on Thursday (15 October) where he announced new investments in five UK startups.
Huang made his remarks about the UK during a street-side Q&A in Mayfair. He praised the country’s intellect, its universities and its culture, and joked that nobody in the world could drink on the streets like the British.
“You have smart people, you have a great culture, you have young people, and the energy is vibrant,” said Huang.
“But for some reason, if there was a million ways to win, you find the one reason not to do it,” he added.
Huang pointed to a phrase used inside Nvidia, “I make my company dumb”, as the approach he wanted the UK to adopt.
“Don’t overthink things. Take a step forward, and that step will lead to another step,” said Huang.
“Believe in yourself. I even believe in you guys! That’s the reason why I invested $10 billion here,” he said
