Are Governments Ready for the Age of AI?
Benedict Macon-Cooney, chief AI and innovation officer at the Tony Blair Institute, on whether governments are ready for AI and what a head of government should do first. In clips played during the hosts' discussion, he talks about using AI inside a leader's own office, universal basic income, personalised AI tutors and where the UK has leverage. Hosts Autria Godfrey, Laila Rizvi and Stephen Horn debate his answers and the speed at which government can act.
Transcript
AI has the potential to change everything, from work, education, healthcare, and even democracy itself. But with that promise comes pressure, pressure on those in positions of power to get it right. So if you were advising the next president or prime minister, what part of the AI strategy playbook would you tear up first? Are governments even remotely ready for the age of AI? Are we prioritizing prosperity for all with the implementation of AI technologies across almost all areas of modern life?
Benedict Macon-Cooney, Chief AI and Innovation Officer at the Tony Blair Institute, is laying out whether the state can act before the AI disruption arrives. Today, we pivot from the tech bros to policymakers as we dive into the role lawmakers should play as we weigh where value, risk, and responsibility move next.
All right, before we get to our guest today, I would love to hear from the both of you, is there a government that is handling AI policy well? And we all chuckle.
No.
Okay.
Here is the answer.
Is there one that you think might be the closest to getting it right?
I mean, I can only really speak to the UK and the US, 'cause they're the ones that I'm most familiar with, but I think the biggest issue is the speed. This is coming so fast, and so, you need to be able to firstly adapt and then deliver on what policies you decide. And no government can do that, no government can move fast.
Right.
So it's pointless in my book; you have to tear everything up, not even an AI strategy.
Well, and the problem is that they don't even know what they're supposed to be legislating, they don't understand AI. I mean, I know at least in the United States, we have lawmakers that don't even know what Facebook is, so-
It's a circus, it's actually a circus.
Yes, yeah.
Well, I think you're being a bit harsh. I think you're being-
Oh.
A bit harsh. I think you will find, at least in this country, that there are people who are having conversations and that have got titles that suggest there's something to do with the answer. So the government has set up, you know, various groups to look into it. I think the problem is a little bit, as Laila says, just the pace of change, and look at HS2, just the length of time it takes to get stuff done is gonna be the thing that's gonna mitigate against government.
And the large governments are at least trying. I mean, they're aware, they realize-
But trying is not enough. It's not enough.
I agree with you, but I-
Well, what would you do then?
I would literally tear everything up, and then rebuild Whitehall from the ground-up, honestly, and I would headhunt people who know what they're doing and are experts, like, a combination of people, because you just can't afford to wait, you can't afford to have like these nice conversations for five years and then say, "Oh, maybe we should do something," and the world is burning around you; as in you can't... Like, there's just far more urgency than that.
Well, our expert today is hopefully gonna answer that exact question. Benedict Macon-Cooney navigates every single day, and we've asked him if he were advising a head of government today, what would his first act of business be?
Probably the biggest upside that you could have as a leader, in the same way as you would if you were running a company, is just by understanding this technology and adopting it into your day-to-day life to start with. Now the way that we see that would be how you set up a prime minister or a president's office. Some of that is that you're seeing a lot of unstructured data coming through, that's mostly Word documents, PowerPoints, which you're having to react to in real time day-to-day. So I would actually just apply AI to how you operate, how you synthesize information, and then how you can react to it to take decisions before you can then begin to look at the wider tranche of government where there'll be lots of other points of opportunity for process automation, improving public service delivery, and just the speed and execution of government more broadly.
So it's interesting, he really talks about kind of zooming in rather than zooming out when it comes to policy.
Mm.
Simplifying it.
Yeah. One thing I would say is that I would not allow any PowerPoints, like, in government. If I was the Prime Minister, I would not allow any PowerPoints, so he shouldn't have said PowerPoints. But, yeah, I think it makes sense that you don't really know until you understand the tool, like, you need to have an understanding of the tools to some extent, you don't have to be an expert in order to be able to apply them, because, again, it's only been a couple of years since we've had them, we don't know what their capabilities are.
I mean, I think it all makes sense, doesn't it? And what he said makes sense. But it does make me think that what he's talking about is kind of how you make your own office more efficient-
Right.
How do you make the running of government more efficient. But it's not dealing with any of the big issues that we've been talking about, like wealth generation, wealth distribution, all that kind of stuff.
Right, I thought the same thing, he sounded like he was speaking like a CEO rather than a prime minister advisor.
Yeah, and I know how much you like CEO.
Well, you talk about the wealth distribution and perhaps like the change there. One of the ideas that's been toyed with is, you know, universal basic income. We also asked him about that as well, take a listen.
Elon Musk in the last couple of days has talked about universal high income as well, 'cause when AI and robotics are creating such abundance that actually people don't need to work as much. I'm a little bit skeptical on some of this because I think people find meaning through work and like creating things like doing things, and, you know, that could also see a shift into other types of activity, whether that's actually going back to, you know, creating other sort of more creative tasks that they like to do as well, which AI currently isn't as good at, and I think maybe stripping away a lot of what might be seen as the kind of bureaucratic and email-pushing jobs. I think that people will ultimately want to find some meaning in work. And even if UBI does become a sort of a new part of the social security net, I think people will always want to work and will find ways to do so.
Both of us were nodding along with that. I agree with him entirely, I think, you know, when you strip away the reason for people to get out of bed every morning, I think you're really headed down a dark path. I don't think that...
But I don't think it addresses why universal basic income would be needed.
Yes, agree.
The majority of people do not work because they need meaning, they work because they need money. Like, yes, I'm glad that my work gives me some meaning. "Agents of Tech," of course, that is just simply not the case for like the majority of the world, it's not.
Well, I think this is a huge issue, isn't it? And, you know, getting into, you know, the kind of arguably the structure of work that we have today is a product of the industrial revolution at the beginning of the 19th century, the work looked totally different before that. And arguably, if you follow along with the logic that AI will be the next industrial revolution, then what you could see is a complete transformation of work. So how human beings get meaning and identity, it, you know, arguably could change. But if we get to something like super general intelligence, it will change, and then how we work, how we get identity, what even work is is going to change.
You know, when we talk about the universal basic income, I can't think of a situation where at least in the United States, we've had like a government program where you give people money, did not work-
COVID checks.
Why, what did that accomplish?
GameStop's price, market share price going up.
Like that's... Right, and like that doesn't even get into the, like, "Where's this money coming from?"
Yeah.
"Who's gonna fund this? Where's this money coming from?"
I think it's just like we have to understand where we are now and what the possible pathways would look like depending on the possible outcomes. Like you said, what if it is super general intelligence as opposed to like us kind of looking at it as this conceptual thing that might happen, and "Okay, maybe UBI here, you know, universal high income here."
Mm-hmm.
And I think it's like, okay, well, what does our system right now exist for? Like the welfare state is to ensure that everyone receives the necessities that they need to like have a good quality of life; in the UK, that is a good education, it's healthcare, that's what the welfare state is. But so, what would universal basic income accomplish, you know, that that's-
That it's not already doing?
Yeah.
When we're talking about perhaps a significant shift when it comes to wealth, we did ask Benedict what he thinks the biggest transformation will be with the result of AI.
One aspect that we've looked at is creating a digital learner ID for all students from as soon as they start school. So you're beginning to create that sort of, you know, lifetime effect of how you pass through system, how you're learning, connecting it up with AI tutors as well as your traditional curriculum so that every piece of, you know, homework you're doing, every exam you're doing is then being fed into a system, and then you're getting feedback on it. And I think that's how you'll begin to create the system of personalized education over time.
And I think then what other way that you begin to think about some of this is how you begin to break the link between basically geography in schools, i.e., like parents right now having to move into a good postcode to get this kid into a good school is not a very good system. And actually if you can create, for example, online access to classes with the best teachers of the country as well, you can begin to break some of that link as well.
Over time though, I probably think the biggest upside reform that a government could make, and this I think would be equivalent to something like the Beveridge reform in the 40s, would be to have a personalized AI tutor for every student because that will really democratize access to really, really high-class education, and I think would be one of the greatest projects a government could undertake today.
That sounds like something that somebody can't wait to monetize, a personal AI tutor for every student. That's got big bucks written all over it. I think that's interesting though, I think it's interesting that education is where he sees one of the biggest transformations with the, you know, advent of AI.
I think it's interesting, isn't it? Because I think, you know, when we talk about this, we talk about the rate of change, right, and we talk about how fast things are moving and how difficult sometimes it is to keep up with it. And, you know, we talk about haves and have-nots in terms of wealth very often, but I think haves and have-nots in terms of these skills and the skill sets that are changing very quickly, you know, is a real issue. So I'm very interested in kind of, you know, what he has to say. Whether, you know, an AI tutor in your pocket is really the difference between sort of educational opportunity or not, I don't know, but I think it's a very interesting way of addressing the challenge.
Yeah. I think you have to zoom out even more and go a bit more radical, which is ask what's the purpose of education genuinely in this day and age, because you have people coming out of university expecting their education to deliver them a job, but that education no longer does that because it's not delivering value in the workplace. So, again, our education system is built for an industrial age where STEM was prioritized-
Well, I think all my adult life, people have had the same conversation really about is the education system, you know, fit for purpose and how things are changing. You know, when I left university with my second class degree in Politics, you know, there was no commercial application for that whatsoever. So I mean, I do think that it's difficult to actually sort of call time on the whole education system and what it means-
Yeah.
And where it's coming from, but I do think it's great that they're having that conversation about what it might mean and how kind of technology... But I'd be slightly reticent to sort of rip the whole thing up and kind of say "It's not working, it's not fit for purpose." You know, I think, again, you were talking about income and what's a job for-
Yeah.
You know, what's school for? It's not just to access-
Exactly, exactly.
Information on a screen, you know, it's for social interaction-
Yeah.
You know, it's for a lot of different things.
But I don't think the education system has actually evolved to accommodate for that and like value that more, as in it's still treated as it being a straightforward path to work; and I think that as work becomes almost the work that humans do less valuable almost. And you don't want every single direction pointing to work, really, if you have universal basic income for people; education serves far more purposes than just a monetary gain.
Job.
Yeah.
All right, we're gonna put a pin in it. But before we head to break, we wanna hear from you. How involved do you feel lawmakers should be in making sure that the playing field is fair? What would you like to see policymakers do to keep AI safe and prosperous for everyone? Weigh in below, and then we'll see you right back here after the break.
Welcome back to "Agents of Tech," and our conversation today with Benedict Macon-Cooney, Chief AI and Innovation Officer at the Tony Blair Institute. Now we're turning, shifting just a little bit to whether AI dependence could lead to national vulnerability. Take a listen to what he had to say.
The core question around sovereignty is making sure that you are allied, but not dependent. If you look at some of the frontier labs and the training of the frontier models, these have cost, you know, trillions of dollars essentially. If you begin to decide there are sort of full players to build a frontier model, I think, number one, having sort of the technical depth within a country is very, very hard because, you know, most of the talent is clustered around Silicon Valley. So then the question of sovereignty becomes like, "Where do I have leverage and where can I have comparative advantage in that sort of stack?"
In the infrastructure side, I think if you look at chips, for example, energy that underpins that as well, because that's one of the huge constraints and whether that's some of the first-of-a-kind technologies like geothermal and nuclear, the one that I'm very excited about is fusion, which the UK, again, has a very, very good set of companies and skills on which it should be I think leveraging very, very highly. And one thing that we've talked about for many years in the UK is the quality of the NHS data and then our biotech and life sciences sector. And that is an area where there'll be a lot of economic value created. And, again, a company like Isomorphic based in King's Cross I think could be the first UK's trillion dollar company that has been hosted and homed here.
So that's encouraging, I think, especially for those countries that maybe we're not, you know, first out of the gates when it comes to AI as far as, you know, there are opportunities where you can, I guess, mitigate the vulnerability potentials.
Thing is, we were first out the gate because we were home to DeepMind, so-
What happened?
Yeah, exactly, what happened there? So what's gonna happen with other companies that the UK or other nations are building where they have leverage, as in the same as it happened with DeepMind?
I don't think he's wrong. And I think it's quite interesting the point that he makes that it's a global supply chain, and that's the first point. And, you know, all these companies are interdependent on each other to some extent. Different countries have different strengths, one of the great strengths in the UK is the workforce, you know, we have very skilled workforce in the world of AI. And he talks about, you know, the big companies that will win out, and, you know, we might have our first trillion dollar company here in King's Cross. But then what? It's a global supply chain and these companies operate globally. And we've already seen this with some of the big US companies.
Yeah.
And how is that gonna change the world's markets, and how do governments respond to that when these companies have got a lot more power than they have, you know, yet to be seen?
Yeah. And I think that's the other thing that AI does mean power. It's a little bit different to other tech, as in it does give you advantage from like a military standpoint. So, are you the most powerful person in that supply chain? I don't know. You might be important, but if there's many of you, then what power do you yield?
So that's an excellent point, I mean, I think that's... And it's quite interesting to see the current US policy is to be the most powerful; where what he's talking about with the UK and others is to know how you fit into that power dynamic, and, you know, whether a country can do what the Americans are trying to do and sort of saying, "Okay, we are it," and with everything that's going on in China and here and other places, whether that can happen or whether we're all pieces to a jigsaw.
That was gonna be my analogy, is if you would probably, you know, lessen your vulnerability, if you did play some role and you were some part of that jigsaw puzzle, as long as you're not dependent on every other company for every other aspect of AI.
But it's an interesting point though, because it comes back to something Laila was talking about earlier, which comes down to value. You know, how are you creating value, how are you providing value? You know, you could argue that, you know, whether sun shines and you're providing the energy for data centers, you know, that could be your part, way of creating value into the structure.
Right. So that lessens your vulnerability.
And France is actually, despite them never working, they have actually done a very good job in the whole-
They must have universal basic income.
As in they start at, you know, 10, 11 AM, but they do have nuclear power, we don't; as in, where are we gonna get with net zero? As in, it's not doing us any favors. It is important, I'm not saying to get rid of renewables, but we do need to think of a better strategy than-
A bit more aggressive.
Close our eyes and say to the world we're doing good whilst everyone else totally ignores-
Leapfrogs ahead.
Yeah, the international rule book.
Well, yeah, I'm not so sure of that. I mean, I think there's a huge amount of innovation going on in that whole area that, you know, we're seeing in China. I mean, China's actually exporting, you know, clean energy production now to an extent that is making it a global leader in that field. I think this is such a dynamic area, and there's so much change and so much evolution that actually trying to keep on top of where value is created and how it is and how therefore you can ensure your position within that structure is really quite difficult. And, you know, what heartens me somewhat in the UK is, we are surrounded by some pretty clever people who-
Yeah.
You know, who are doing some really good creative things.
But I don't think we're extracting the talent enough, as in, it's extreme. As in, Benedict said that the talent is in Silicon Valley, no offense, but I think that we have a lot of talent density.
You've watched "TBPN," haven't you?
No...
There they are.
But they're extracting our talent underneath our nose.
Yeah, no, it's a great point, and I think the point for another show.
All right, well, we wanna finish with Benedict today by asking him kind of the big final closing question of what should governments do now?
How government operates just needs to change just to deal with the scale of the change and how fast this is moving itself. I mean, if you look at how government operates commensurate with the private sector today, they are on, and they always have been, very different speeds. If you take a person that, you know, has access to Netflix, Amazon, all of these consumer services, which are very, very cheap, very, very fast, and then every point of contact it has with the government, it's extremely slow. Solving that structural change is the number one priority because if you don't actually improve the speed of how government, you know, does regulation, policymaking, et cetera, it will never be able to catch up the speed of change in the economy and address some of these big structural changes.
I do agree with what he's mentioned there about, you know, the lag... What we've seen, if history has proven nothing, is that the lag between technology taking off and then governments trying to play catch-up. I mean, it's been there since the internet, the invention of the internet, it's been there, you know, forever. So I don't think that there's ever gonna be a time when, you know, lawmakers are in sync with what Silicon Valley is doing.
See, I don't know. I think it's just all a bit simplistic, right, you know, in this kind of idea that the private sector does this, the public sector does this. I mean, private sector is not an amorphous blob, you know, there are millions of companies all marching to their own drumbeat. You know, there are some private sector companies that have got no AI in them whatsoever and others that have. And also, yeah, have you ever tried calling, you know, Netflix or-
Yeah. I mean, have we ever tried getting through to the call center? No-
I agree with you that the private sector is not all good.
No, in terms of that accountability. But I don't think that's the role of the public sector, I don't think the role of the public sector is to be like Netflix. I think the role of the public sector is to understand, try and get an understanding of what the issues facing our society is and what the role of government is and how to respond to that, not to mimic Netflix.
How do you do that? As in, what does the framework-
Well, what's the role for government? I mean, the role for government is to create policies, to dictate policy, and then pass laws that govern how that works. You don't need a Department of Trade and Industry to do that, and in fact, that's the last thing you need to do, 'cause probably, you know, companies are getting on with this themselves. What you do need to do, talk about some of the big issues that we've talked about, you know, which is inequality, both in health and in education and how are we gonna deal with the big societal issues? And we need to start talking about that, and not make us find Netflix-
But the government... I agree that we need to talk about it, but we also are, like, what about after talking about it? We do need to have a plan to deliver on those policies.
But it's a democracy, right? It's a democracy, right? So what you need to do is you need to be able to take people with you, you need to be able to get a majority in favor of something, and then you need to be able to put legislation together and frameworks, and it takes time. And the only way to do it is by actually starting to approach those subjects, and not just kind of saying, you know, "I wish we were more like Anthropic," you know, because we're never going to be.
All right, we're gonna leave it at that. So our thanks to Benedict Macon-Cooney for our conversation today. We still wanna know what you think. Are lawmakers moving quickly enough to keep up with the changing AI landscape? Would you like to see more safeguards in place around AI, or is there a concern that too much government interference might actually stifle innovation? Keep the conversation going below, and then be sure to Like and Subscribe while you're there. Thanks so much for joining us for today's episode; we're back next week with an all-new "Agents of Tech."