To think we're fucked? Given that our government (s) couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery going by recent history....

I’m more concerned about them selling access to the nations healthcare records to private companies

I work for a big multinational who was planning to use AI to reduce headcount - it’s not quite there yet and they often have to backtrack. At the moment AI can make existing headcount more efficient - it’s going to take a little longer to replace people and then it will be the process driven tasks

its an odd announcement because I would have expected gov departments to already be doing this

Labour might want to try at not driving away talent. We might create good things but keeping people is harder and their policies are doing the opposite.

The potential of AI to improve healthcare is massive. But I'm not sure the NHS is at the point of being ready. Elderly dad sent to A and E by GP with an envelope containing print out of his treatment record. I was really taken back and said but can't the hospital access your GP records online? Apparently not. So we may not be poised at the starting point of a technological revolution...

AI is good, it means you cut out the drudgery. However, it also means you need creative analytical thinkers more than ever to use the AI properly. And you need an energy plan to back up the AI. So unless they intend to invest in education and energy as well, it won’t work.
For example, far more university degrees backing this up so they are not so oversubscribed and lots of university courses to back up the green energy side of things (and perhaps teaching school children to analyse and think for themselves). And unless they sort out the National Grid as a priority none of this can work.
Last time I checked they scrapped the Computing funding in state education just a few days ago so they are not actually serious. They cannot possibly be or they are not funding it properly. They also scrapped Latin - again, coding relies on language and maths skills. I guess nobody bothered to check that one out, as usual.

AI should allow the public sector to become far more efficient.

Manual processes that are slow or overlooked can be replaced by AI, meaning more manpower for other things.

eg using AI to identify and fix potholes. That’s something which doesn’t happen because we don’t have enough capacity, AI could fix that.

All sorts of things you do will be using AI to make the process more efficient and accurate.

I wondered what they'd come up with today. Ooh look a squirrel!

The Tories would be doing exactly the same thing. Remember Sunaks fawning "interview" with Musk?

These headlines are an attempt to paper over the massive issues they’re facing

Like the China one the other day

A government that understands new technologies and welcomes investments is a good thing

AI is already everywhere, we’re already using it every day.

Ah, so all of the many people who have been loudly and repeatedly complaining about potholes and reporting them all - some have even had birthday parties organised by locals after being left for a year unfixed - couldn't get the message across?

Is this the government's version of pretending that thousands of women have never said anything about an important topic, because they only listen when a man says it?

This is the very definition of trying to fatten a pig by constantly weighing it.

And these things are always introduced and sold as being for simple, uncontroversial things, but they never stop there.

Sorry, not getting at you personally; just annoyed at a government - all governments - clearly assuming that we're all stupid.

They've got nothing left to see and we don't seem to be able to give incentives to produce so they are desperate
They are selling us and our data. They are so desperate they won't put appropriate safeguards in place

Not sure about health care and prime prevention. But DH and I have been using ChatGPT to scan DC's knowledge organisers from secondary, and generate practice sheets. We use it to generate homework exercises. It's actually really great if people know how to use it.

We also use it on holidays to scan menu at restaurants.

Both of us use it at work. It's part of the tool kit now.

I don’t think they know what they’re doing on anything so may as well chuck this in there

Yanbu. I have a friend who works in a govt team trying to implement AI and at best she and her colleagues could be described as "enthusiastic amateurs".

Post horizon etc I would have expected a bit more reflection before rushing headlong into this

You vote for muppets, you get muppets.

Hopefully they will just use it for detecting potholes, surely not much can go wrong there

If my new computer boss is better than my micromanaging bully of a boss, I'm up for it.

(Seriously though, my daughter wants to go into a creative industry and she's already thinking how she's going to have to set herself apart from this AI shit.)

The hospital I work at is so tech averse it blocks ITS OWN Facebook page on our network. Yep, this is going to go great....

The thing is, much stuff doesn’t actually need Gen AI if you haven’t got be basics - it’s a fallacy and hype - bunch of stuff can be done well using trad AI models and data management / reporting etc

My concern is that many orgs in the public sector have no idea where the “frontier” is in basic stuff (whether intentionally or through not being leaders) and so this lends itself to being taken down the garden road by high cost suppliers who spout fancy stuff to people who have no idea

Chat GPT is that you?

Given (all) govt record for disastrous IT projects - Post Office, Integrated Patient Records etc, the thought of future policy making based on AI is very worrying.

AI is best used where the same task has to be performed repeatedly, many times, so decision making can be based on a huge data set. Hardly true of governmental policy making.

It would just be an offload of responsibility, and laziness