Andrew Griffith is the Shadow Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology
Socialist governments have never had an easy relationship with changing technology. Whether agricultural mechanisation improving crop yields in the twentieth century or the UK’s reliance on coal in the seventies, they are found reliably on the wrong side of history.
So too is the case now. This Labour government has now made three wrong moves on technology in as many weeks: scrapping a previously committed £1.3 billion investment in AI and the next generation of supercomputing, confirming it intends to impose EU-style regulations on AI, and now talking about additional laws to ban things online which are lawful in the offline world.
Add to these Treasury briefings against the research and development tax credit regime, attacks on the internationally domiciled providers of capital which are essential to ‘scale up’ UK deep tech businesses, and potential budget hikes in capital gains tax and there is an emerging narrative towards technology that would be more familiar to a machine-breaking luddite rather than a government genuinely serious about building on the UK’s formidable strengths as a global technology hub.
Ominously, references to the UK being a ‘science and tech superpower’ have been dropped from ministers’ speeches since this government came to power.
Arguably the act of greatest self-harm to the UK’s economic future is the cancellation of Conservative plans to invest £1.3 billion over the next spending review period on boosting the UK’s artificial intelligence research and the next generation of “Exascale” computing up to fifty times more powerful than the current system. This measured and costed plan was one of the recommendations of the Independent Review of The Future of Compute led by Professor Zoubin Ghahramani of the University of Cambridge and a Vice President at Google.
Ottoline Leyser, UKRI chief executive, described the upgraded super-computer as “critical to unlocking advances in research and innovation, from drug design through to energy security and extreme weather modelling”. She was right. UK leadership in many breakthrough technologies depends upon researchers having access to sufficient fast computing power to do their work.
In cancelling this vital project – equivalent to just the same amount of money that NHS England burns through in three days – Labour is sentencing the whole UK economy to the equivalent of the old ‘wheel of death’ familiar to users of slow broadband.
And yet advanced technologies such as AI or the equally radical developments taking place in engineering biology or quantum are central to tackling the intimidating set of challenges faced by all mature, western economies: aging populations, climate change, and the need to keep ourselves and our democracies safe against new or asymmetric adversaries at a time of limited financial resources.
Emulating the widely discredited EU approach to regulating AI brings no benefits to the UK except maybe currying favour in Brussels. It fails to properly grasp a healthy risk-based approach which the fast-moving tech sector needs to survive. There is an absence of evidence-based risk classifications which has cast a trawler-sized regulatory net over the most promising AI technologies.
All premature regulation will do is chill development and drive AI firms and executives to other countries. This matters little for EU member states which have no indigenous AI sectors of their own but matters a great deal for the UK which punches above our weight with the third largest AI industry globally and firms such as Quantexa, Wayve, Open AI and Google Deep Mind operating here.
Given the chance, the UK AI market is expected to grow to over £1 trillion by 2035 – delivering not only new jobs but unlocking transformational positive change. That’s much-needed economic growth no political leader should be seeking to hold back.
Finally, the last few weeks have seen government-licensed attacks on technology companies and calls for new regulations and criminal offences. I condemn any form of ‘street violence’ beyond the bounds of lawful peaceful protest.
Whether political extremism comes from the far left, eco-terrorists, or far right, mob rule is not the way that we decide policies here in the UK. But rather than cool heads prevailing, we have seen Labour ministers and Labour mayors dial up the rhetoric and seek to make technology the scapegoat.
To be clear, the online world must never be a safe space for abusers, criminals, or terrorists which is why in government we passed the Online Safety Act. In particular, children must be protected.
However, free speech is the bedrock on which all our other freedoms rest and at a time when many of the significant powers, new offences, and tougher sentences contained within that Act have yet to be fully tested, the very last thing we need is intemperate Labour politicians coming up with the technological equivalent of the ‘Dangerous Dogs Act’.
Andrew Griffith is the Shadow Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology
Socialist governments have never had an easy relationship with changing technology. Whether agricultural mechanisation improving crop yields in the twentieth century or the UK’s reliance on coal in the seventies, they are found reliably on the wrong side of history.
So too is the case now. This Labour government has now made three wrong moves on technology in as many weeks: scrapping a previously committed £1.3 billion investment in AI and the next generation of supercomputing, confirming it intends to impose EU-style regulations on AI, and now talking about additional laws to ban things online which are lawful in the offline world.
Add to these Treasury briefings against the research and development tax credit regime, attacks on the internationally domiciled providers of capital which are essential to ‘scale up’ UK deep tech businesses, and potential budget hikes in capital gains tax and there is an emerging narrative towards technology that would be more familiar to a machine-breaking luddite rather than a government genuinely serious about building on the UK’s formidable strengths as a global technology hub.
Ominously, references to the UK being a ‘science and tech superpower’ have been dropped from ministers’ speeches since this government came to power.
Arguably the act of greatest self-harm to the UK’s economic future is the cancellation of Conservative plans to invest £1.3 billion over the next spending review period on boosting the UK’s artificial intelligence research and the next generation of “Exascale” computing up to fifty times more powerful than the current system. This measured and costed plan was one of the recommendations of the Independent Review of The Future of Compute led by Professor Zoubin Ghahramani of the University of Cambridge and a Vice President at Google.
Ottoline Leyser, UKRI chief executive, described the upgraded super-computer as “critical to unlocking advances in research and innovation, from drug design through to energy security and extreme weather modelling”. She was right. UK leadership in many breakthrough technologies depends upon researchers having access to sufficient fast computing power to do their work.
In cancelling this vital project – equivalent to just the same amount of money that NHS England burns through in three days – Labour is sentencing the whole UK economy to the equivalent of the old ‘wheel of death’ familiar to users of slow broadband.
And yet advanced technologies such as AI or the equally radical developments taking place in engineering biology or quantum are central to tackling the intimidating set of challenges faced by all mature, western economies: aging populations, climate change, and the need to keep ourselves and our democracies safe against new or asymmetric adversaries at a time of limited financial resources.
Emulating the widely discredited EU approach to regulating AI brings no benefits to the UK except maybe currying favour in Brussels. It fails to properly grasp a healthy risk-based approach which the fast-moving tech sector needs to survive. There is an absence of evidence-based risk classifications which has cast a trawler-sized regulatory net over the most promising AI technologies.
All premature regulation will do is chill development and drive AI firms and executives to other countries. This matters little for EU member states which have no indigenous AI sectors of their own but matters a great deal for the UK which punches above our weight with the third largest AI industry globally and firms such as Quantexa, Wayve, Open AI and Google Deep Mind operating here.
Given the chance, the UK AI market is expected to grow to over £1 trillion by 2035 – delivering not only new jobs but unlocking transformational positive change. That’s much-needed economic growth no political leader should be seeking to hold back.
Finally, the last few weeks have seen government-licensed attacks on technology companies and calls for new regulations and criminal offences. I condemn any form of ‘street violence’ beyond the bounds of lawful peaceful protest.
Whether political extremism comes from the far left, eco-terrorists, or far right, mob rule is not the way that we decide policies here in the UK. But rather than cool heads prevailing, we have seen Labour ministers and Labour mayors dial up the rhetoric and seek to make technology the scapegoat.
To be clear, the online world must never be a safe space for abusers, criminals, or terrorists which is why in government we passed the Online Safety Act. In particular, children must be protected.
However, free speech is the bedrock on which all our other freedoms rest and at a time when many of the significant powers, new offences, and tougher sentences contained within that Act have yet to be fully tested, the very last thing we need is intemperate Labour politicians coming up with the technological equivalent of the ‘Dangerous Dogs Act’.