Britain should embrace a future of AI doctors, nurses and even teachers or risk being left behind in the biggest upheaval since the Industrial Revolution, Sir Tony Blair has said.

The former prime minister said that fears over artificial intelligence should be outweighed by the “absolutely transformative” impact it could have on public services by saving time and cutting costs.

“When I stand back and I look at what [AI] is doing, I think we’re in the foothills of the most transformative revolution since the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century,” he told the SXSW London festival.

“Government’s all about process, so you could use AI to speed up the process of the government, making sure that we do, for example, all the routine jobs of government much more efficiently. You could be responding to people in a much more sensitive, faster, better, more efficient way.

“If, for example, you’re able to merge data sets across departments, you’re going to save money. You’re going to analyse, based on health data, in a way that allows you to make better health policy. And then, when you look in public services, you should be able to personalise education in the future.

“You could have AI tutors, you should have AI nurses, AI doctors. We are already doing a lot of imaging much, much better through using artificial intelligence. It will make [government] much smaller, more efficient, cost less and give a better service to the customer.”

The country cannot afford to be squeamish about the power of this emerging technology, said Blair, adding: “It’s absurd we haven’t yet put all of our NHS data there available to be used for innovation.”

AI was neither “good” nor “bad” per se, but a power that needed to be harnessed responsibly, he said. “We’re literally just beginning this journey. Just as the Industrial Revolution gave birth to the 20th-century state, so I think this technology revolution ultimately will change the whole way the state of government works.

“Yes, you’ve got to mitigate the risks to deal with the dangers but you’ve got to access the opportunities. If I were in government today, I think I would be thinking about how you reorganise the whole government around how you embrace and access this revolution.”

Attack on ‘inertia conspiracy’ in Whitehall

The SXSW festival, a cross-industry event founded in Austin, Texas, is holding its first European edition in London this June. The audience heard how generative AI could save civil servants on average 26 minutes every day, which could be refocused on more important tasks — all the more reason, Blair argued, for “resistant” bureaucrats to embrace the new technology.

A recent government trial found that 30,000 civil servants could be freed from the drudgery of routine administrative tasks, such as drafting documents, summarising meetings and handling emails, if AI were to be rolled out across Whitehall.

“When I was growing up, people said the civil service was a Tory conspiracy. And when I got in there, I realised it wasn’t a conspiracy for the Tories or for Labour. It’s a conspiracy for inertia, it has got a genius for absorbing the impetus for change and suffocating it,” said Blair.

Britain could become obsolete, says minister

Blair was discussing government in the age of AI, alongside Peter Kyle, the technology secretary who laughed off recent criticism by Sir Elton John who called him a “moron” over controversial proposals to allow big tech companies to take copyrighted works without permission.

“My brother thought it was the best thing that he’s ever heard,” laughed Kyle. The technology secretary said that he was willing to take risks when experimenting with AI, because he believed it was a greater risk to resist change and risk the UK becoming “obsolete.

There could be great rewards from offering up public data to the tech companies, Kyle said.

“This government, this country, our state has the most extraordinarily powerful and rich data set, [more] than any other country in the world.

“Now, if we can use that data wisely and safely, then we can have the kinds of leaps and bounds forward for the scientific development for the commercialisation of new techniques, new services, new medicines, and the understanding of humankind and social sciences that no other country in the world can do.

“And of course, AI is absolutely perfectly matched to doing this kind of work with data. Now I don’t think that we will have the permission from people to do that, unless people feel connected to that journey themselves.”

Source: