The UK's Misplaced Enthusiasm (with Gina Neff), 2025.01.20

In January, the United Kingdom's new Labour Party prime minister, Keir Starmer, announced a new initiative to go all in on AI in the hopes of big economic returns, with a promise to “mainline” it into the country’s veins: everything from offering public data to private companies, to potentially fast-tracking miniature nuclear power plants to supply energy to data centers. UK-based researcher Gina Neff helps explain why this flashy policy proposal is mostly a blank check for big tech, and has little to offer either the economy or working people.
Gina Neff (mctd.ac.uk/team-members/gina-neff) is executive director of the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy (mctd.ac.uk) at the University of Cambridge, and a professor of responsible AI at Queen Mary University of London.
References:
The AI Opportunities Action Plan (gov.uk/government/publications/ai-opportunitie…)
‘Mainlined into UK’s veins’: Labour announces huge public rollout of AI (theguardian.com/politics/2025/jan/12/mainlined…)
Gina Neff: Can democracy survive AI? (sociologica.unibo.it/article/view/21108/19264)
Labour's AI Action Plan - a gift to the far right (computerweekly.com/opinion/Labours-AI-Action-P…)
Fresh AI Hell:
"AI" tool for predicting how Parliament will react to policy proposals (theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/20/ai-tool…)
"AI" detects age based on hand movements (npr.org/2024/12/19/nx-s1-5231020/australia-top…)
Apple Intelligence misleading summaries of news (bbc.com/news/articles/cd0elzk24dno)
Book simplification as a service (bsky.app/profile/ajaxsinger.bsky.social/post/3…)
CEO doesn't understand why kid turned AI features of toy off (bsky.app/profile/osakanone.bsky.social/post/3l…)
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Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park (naomipleasurepark.com).
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.