So, what of the future and purpose of the Conservative Party? When it comes to AI and what a true tech revolution might provide there’s a vacancy a slot for a cautiously optimistic pro-AI party. I wonder who might be willing to fill it?
We must wholeheartedly embrace the new wave of intelligent autonomous machines that are now becoming sufficiently capable to positively disrupt many sectors of the economy, but particularly those categories of goods and services that remain heavily dependent on low-cost labour.
Even if Reeves U-turns and announces the funding tomorrow, Britain would not get its exascale computer up and running until 2027 at the earliest. In the meantime, the world’s tech heavyweights will surge ahead and Labour Britain becomes a footnote in the future of digital development.
Labour simply cannot secure investment, make deals or understand how business works, even when the work has already been done for them. AstraZeneca tried to save a deal we did by increasing their investment. Labour still walked away, costing our country jobs and investment.
Militarily, there can be no doubt, space has become an increasingly essential domain for conducting operations. The UK Defence Space Strategy clearly sets out the benefits and strategic advantages of controlling space.
Yesterday’s announcement makes a lot of sense. It is just possible this is an area where, with cross-party support, things might actually happen.
We need clear-eyed deregulation, removal of barriers and the lifting of burdens for this most important of sectors. Labour rejects this approach, so we Conservatives must show people that our alternative vision is worth voting for.
What do we really want? What’s the ultimate reason that we are passionate about politics?
More than 60 years on from CP Snow’s famous lecture on the ‘Two Cultures’, the gulf he identified between the sciences and the arts is still with us.
We are on a voyage of discovery about what the possible impact is. That is why I fully support the creation of the AI Safety Institute, to monitor and think through the issues.
We now have a second effective vaccine in our arsenal. We have world-leading science capabilities to keep on innovating. We have the backing of the British public. Let’s get the job done.
Space is useful. It enables us to communicate, to navigate, and to track what is happening on earth. And there is now a surge of Space activity. Instead of being dominated by Government agencies getting into the detail of technology design, there are now entrepreneurs running flexible low cost projects.
We might not rejoin, but the political momentum is now with those seeking a closer relationship. From a Brexiteer perspective, Johnson is sounding rather complacent.
He may have less than a year, as Parliament returns and his Party’s conference looms, to persuade voters of his case – which he has scarcely even begun to make.
In British right of centre circles, suspicion of scientific expertise is growing more common, even among those who can quote Cicero but not explain carbon capture. If we want to be taken seriously, then we must not sneer at evidence and think like rational adults.