Starmer supplied a stodgy speech on investment to the International Investment Summit. Lobby hacks have enthusiastically written up his plegdge to “rip up” regulation and cut bureaucracy – while Labour’s new legislation does largely the opposite…
After the speech Starmer sat in for a 30-minute Q&A with former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, whose first comment was: “I was shocked when Labour said it was in favour of growth.” Starmer sulkily replied that “wealth creation is the number one mission of a Labour government”…
The Q&A was watched live on LinkedIn, where it was hosted, by a pitiful average of 440 people. Hilariously about 20 minutes of the entire chat was taken up by AI as business leaders constantly rediverted to the topic. Starmer just repeatedly said it’s a “real game-changer.” Maybe there was a good reason Sunak bothered to invite Elon Musk to chat about the new technology – especially as Musk has just invented AI-powered robots…
‘The real opposition’ releases their party political broadcast. The first made with AI…
The so-called “government of growth” has abandoned yet another investment initiative—the £1.3 billion fund aimed at supporting UK tech and AI projects. The Edinburgh exascale supercomputer’s future has been thrown up in the air – one of the world’s fastest computers that could revolutionise breakthroughs in AI, medicine, and…clean low-carbon energy. A reminder: investment and reform in the UK’s tech industry was a key pledge in Labour’s manifesto, which promised to:
“to grasp the opportunities of new technologies, with an AI sector plan, a new national data library to support cutting-edge research, 10-year budgets for key world innovation institutions, and planning reform to build the datacentres and infrastructure we need.”
Now, Labour has scrapped what they label “unfunded” plans to nurture the very industry they previously touted as essential for economic growth. This isn’t the first pro-growth initiative they’ve shelved since taking office. Angela Rayner has reduced the housebuilding target in London by 20%, while Rachel Reeves has cancelled numerous infrastructure projects, including the building of 40 new hospitals and 45 railway lines. Just weeks ago, Reeves positioned Labour as the party of “investment and reform.” As usual, Labour promised the land of milk and honey, only to quickly reverse course and set the stage for higher taxes instead…
Labour donor and Ecotricity founder Dale Vince has been turning up the heat on the Tories on a subject close to his heart: climate change. Dale, who’s donated more than £5 million to Labour’s election war chest has a fortune estimated at over £100 million. The Foreign Secretary, whom we recently learnt was deceived by a Russian deep fake AI, now has Dale Vince posting an AI generated video featuring the relative pauper David Cameron, whom he calls a member of the “privileged elite”, supposedly apologising for “publicly promising the greenest government and then absolutely shafting it behind closed doors”. It’s hardly a realistic AI performance…
David Cameron is one of the privileged elites that have ruled our country for 14 years now – he’s the originator of cutting ‘the green crap,’ which we’ve just exposed as economic nonsense. Here he is fessing up…:)
Read the full report here: https://t.co/K1sCZWugji pic.twitter.com/2Vd7uN705D
— Dale Vince (@DaleVince) June 22, 2024
In the very missable small print at the bottom Dale mentions it was AI-generated. Can’t help thinking that if someone did this to him the thin-skinned narcissist would be calling his bully boy lawyers…
Yesterday the BBC’s “Disinformation Correspondent” Marianna Spring and Panorama revealed their top scoop: that “Donald Trump supporters have been creating and sharing AI-generated fake images of black voters to encourage African Americans to vote Republican“. Spring boasted that she had “discovered dozens of deepfakes portraying black people as supporting the former president. There’s no evidence directly linking these images to Trump’s campaign.” The revelations were enough to warrant an investigation piece and a special podcast episode…
On second glance the nefarious deepfakes may not be the conspiracy Spring was looking for. The clearly-watermarked AI images of Trump with black Americans are the creations of a joke account whose Twitter bio states: “Documenting the history of the 45th President of the United States, Donald J. Trump (parody)“. The BBC’s disinformation team must have been horrified to learn that American voters might be duped by tweets saying “Donald Trump was in fact the 4th wise man who brought Jesus gifts after he was born“, or he was “the first person to circumnavigate the Earth” in 1522, as well as starring in Ben-Hur. Images of Trump in the WW1 trenches will be sure to swing the American public…
This comes as BBC Verify launches a new “content credentials” feature to detail whether images have had their “authenticity verified“. Judging by its track record they might want to hire some reporters to fact check their own content…
Civil servants’ love affair with AI chatbots looks like it is winding up. The Department for Work and Pensions has issued new guidance to its Acceptable Use Policy for its tech systems. Included in the guidance, which applies to “all DWP employees, agents, contractors, consultants, suppliers and business partners” and covers all tech in the building, is an unequivocal ban on ChatGPT:
“Users must not attempt to access public AI applications – such as ChatGPT – when undertaking DWP business, or on DWP-approved devices“.
In the meantime Oliver Dowden’s “AI Hit Squad” will in the best traditions of joined-up-government presumably continue in its mission to achieve “the smallest possible state and the best outcomes” by using AI to do civil servants’ work for them. Three weeks after the government’s AI framework was announced its consistency on the new technology is falling apart…
