The scale of artificial intelligence (AI)’s transformation into economic and commercial life is difficult to fathom.
In a week when AI regulation is on the agenda in Washington and Bletchley Park, it is possible to see its ability to transform.
British education innovator Pearson offered practical insight and improved prospects.
It noted that generative AI helped students deal with complex problems. Pearson plans to make more use of this as it improves its own education blueprint in areas such as language learning.
The government’s major concern is that AI and its use are advancing so quickly that safety is lost in the slipstream.
Tech race: Rishi Sunak’s ‘AI Safety Summit’ at Bletchley Park is designed to demonstrate leadership in a technology area where Britain’s pioneers excelled
The White House issues an executive order requiring AI developers to register systems that could pose a threat to US national security.
Rishi Sunak’s ‘AI Safety Summit’ at the intellectual home of codebreaker Alan Turing aims to demonstrate leadership in a technology area where Britain’s pioneers excel.
The British pioneer Deep Mind was picked up by Google in 2014. Despite the expected presence of EU President Ursula von der Leyen at the summit, along with US Vice President Kamala Harris, it appears unlikely that an agreement will be reached on anything other than basic security rules.
That’s critical, but there are also competitive issues at stake.
Ahead of the summit, the City of London Corporation notes that private investment in UK AI scale-ups will reach £3 billion by 2022, which is double the funding of France, Germany and the rest of Europe combined.
So it’s no big surprise that President Emmanuel Macron won’t honor Britain with his presence. Paris has committed €500 million (£430 million) in state funding to AI, including €40 million (£34 million) in open source, offering the technology to anyone.
The fear of British start-ups, such as London unicorn Stability AI, is that Bletchley will entrench the dominance of big tech. We’ve recently seen the sharp elbows of Microsoft taking over a dominant role in gaming with the purchase of Activision Blizzard, and working its way through competition regulation.
By committing to open architecture, Cambridge-based Arm Holdings was able to beat rival Nvidia. That didn’t stop the American chip designer from entering through the back door when it became a cornerstone investor in Arm on the New York Stock Exchange this year.
Sunak is expected to arrive at the summit with £400 million in goodies for Britain’s AI, including funds to accelerate cancer research. The question is how many of these will turn out to be new funds.
It will be a drop in the ocean when you compare it to the vast resources available to ruthless Silicon Valley giants.
Big pressure
Monetarism has become very unfashionable lately, and skeptics consider it no better than astrology.
Followers of the faith, such as Tim Congdon of International Monetary Research, were left out.
Yet he was one of the first to recognize that Covid’s excess of quantitative easing could only lead to major inflation.
The most dove-like member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), Dr Swati Dhingra of the London School of Economics, has voted in favor of a rate pause, saying it takes time for monetary policy to work.
She can be expected to do the same when the MPC meets this week to decide whether or not to keep interest rates at 5.25 percent again.
Julian Jessop of the Institute for Economic Affairs fears that the Bank has gone too far. He tweets that Britain’s “broad money” – cash, deposits and other short-term instruments – is collapsing in a trend “consistent” with a severe recession.
So far, the resilient UK economy is refusing to comply, although the sharp fall in mortgage applications in September is not encouraging.
The arguments for compensating for monetary tightness with tax cuts are becoming increasingly stronger.
Honey pot
HSBC made a profit of £24 billion in the first nine months of the year.
So it is madness to focus on a £410 million reserve in the third quarter to cover property losses in China – unless there is fear that more will follow.
Investors will be grateful for a £2.5 billion share buyback, which will boost pensions and savings pots.
The Lib Dems describe this as the result of Tory economic vandalism. Hardly!