LONDON — The U.K. must go “full steam ahead” in cultivating artificial intelligence and warnings about its impact on jobs are overblown, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt argued Wednesday night.
Speaking at a POLITICO Tech UK event in London, Hunt shrugged off recent warnings from Twitter owner Elon Musk about the dangers of AI, and said he “doesn’t buy” fears that mass job losses must follow its rise. The West, he said, has to “win the race” to set global standards for the emerging technology.
“Of course, there’s the potential for this technology to be used in a bad way. And indeed, we need to be very mindful of that,” Hunt said of artificial intelligence.
“But I don’t believe it’s possible in the world we’re in, where there are countries that don’t share our values that are investing massively in AI, to opt out of this race. I think we have to win the race — and then be super smart about the way we regulate it so that it is a force for good, enhances the values that we all believe in.”
Musk said in an interview with Fox News this week that the emergence of AI could lead to “civilizational destruction” if mismanaged and warned urgent U.S. regulation is needed.
But Hunt said AI could make a “major contribution” to boosting the sluggish productivity of the U.K. economy, a problem that has bedeviled successive chancellors.
Pressed on concerns about middle-class job losses from the AI revolution, Hunt said: “I just don’t buy that.”
And he added: “Look what’s happened to unemployment since we’ve been in office in 2010. It’s halved. And it’s halved in a period where every time there’s been a new technology, we’ve leaned right into it. We haven’t tried to protect legacy models.
“In fact, the U.K. is very well known for going full steam ahead for every new technology there is.”
Not spooked by Macron
Hunt set out his own ambition last fall to turn Britain into the “world’s next Silicon Valley,” pledging billions for quantum computing tech and promising to invest in a new supercomputer to help power AI research.
The U.K.’s top finance minister told POLITICO he wanted to make “damn sure” he followed through on that promise and insisted he wasn’t worried about other European nations, like France, overtaking the U.K.
“In the last decade, we’ve become the third-largest tech economy in the world after the U.S. and China,” he said.
“We’ve become Europe’s largest life sciences industry, Europe’s second-largest clean energy industry, Europe’s largest film and TV industry.
“It’s that combination of brilliant tech businesses, higher education, research and financial services that gives us something special — but I will be the first to say we are not there. We’ve got the ingredients but we haven’t yet baked the cake.”
Hot chips
Hunt was also pressed on the U.K.’s long-awaited strategy on advanced semiconductors, which has been hit by a fresh delay this week and faced wrangling between government departments.
Both the U.S. and the EU are looking to spend vast sums subsidizing the production of the chips — used in everything from iPhones to advanced weaponry — to better compete with China and to ensure the long-term safety of supply chains. Taiwan currently makes the vast majority of the globe’s advanced chips.
But Hunt hinted that the U.K. is unlikely to try to compete with the EU and U.S. by announcing its own raft of subsidies.
He said: “Do we all say, ‘we’re going to do this on our own and go back to protectionism,’ which would bring global growth back into the Dark Ages?
“When I was in Washington last week, my message to my fellow finance ministers was that it would be a big step backwards if we start putting up protectionist barriers for all our critical technologies, when in the end, it will be cheaper for all of us and more resilient if we have supply chains that tap into the competitive advantage that we all individually have.”
When Hunt tried ChatGPT
Hunt also shed light on his own tech use. He said his children still use TikTok after he deleted his own account over concerns about its geolocation features. British ministers were recently banned from using the Chinese-owned app over security concerns.
And Hunt said he had taken to AI chatbot ChatGPT this weekend to find out whether or not he is a good chancellor. It had, he said, replied with a reference to his current boss: “As a large language model, I don’t have subjective opinions on everything. But Jeremy Hunt is not chancellor of the exchequer, that’s Rishi Sunak.”
