Conversation

OK, gonna be doing my best Torsten Bell impression and run a live thread of Rishi speaking with the DeepMind CEO, Demis Hassabis. Not expecting too much new stuff but lets do a vibe check at least 🧵😎
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Prime Minister Rishi Sunak @ London Tech Week twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1
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Sunak saying we are at an advantage for the tech revolution, lists the usual stuff about our universities, DeepMind, and comparing us to a very limited European tech market
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Rishi quickly moves onto AI, worth dwelling on how quick things have changed. This very same speech a year ago would have been seen by many in the tech industry as overblown. Especially talking about AI safety.
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Demis asks Rishi what he thinks the big AI promises are: Rishi says AI as a assistant, public service transformation, and education (which he is most excited about)
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Demis asks what can make UK the best place to start+scale tech companies. Sunak quotes (I think) stat on immigrant founders, points to capital, and entrepreneurial culture. All very high-level this and stuff nobody is going to disagree with
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Rishi talks about the 'creative industries powerhouse'. Glad he mentions this as think it is perhaps getting forgotten in AI age, even though big innovations in AI and immersive tech and inherently linked to the industry
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Demis - apart from AI, what technologies excite you? Rishi - *conveniently lists all of the key technologies in the UK's national science and tech framework*
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Sunak mentions regulatory sandboxes as a good example of our track record in terms of doing safe innovation. Agree w this tho worth remembering these can generally only operate on a small scale, and will require regulators to be well resourced
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Sunak mentions that Foundation Model taskforce will have delegated freedoms in the way that Vaccine taskforce had some. Let's hope this is true. If only a think tank had some work coming out covering some of this very soon 👀
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When asked by BBC about AI and job losses, Sunak says we need to change how we fund education (to a lifelong approach), democratising access to skills (then mentions maths at 18 lol)
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Times ask about X-risk. Sunak says 'Demis can comment on that', and then talks about risks to employment, mis-use, and 'capability overhang' which are concerning and require guardrails. Demis says the right way to proceed is w the precautionary principle and scientific method.
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Bloomberg asks the good question of why people would setup AI companies in the UK would come here when EU is down the track with their AI Act. Sunak mentions the poor metric of our overall citations, points to big tech companies setting up their EU HQ in the UK
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Again, he says that the taskforce provides 'more money than anywhere else in the world for safety research'. V interesting he has made that claim, worth holding him to it.
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