The UK government gets into bed with OpenAI as heroic professor decries ‘policymakers and idiots around the world getting sucked into this hype-fest… terrible, terrible companies, just crazy’
The United Kingdom’s Department for Science, Innovation & Technology (DSIT) has signed a new “memorandum of understanding” with OpenAI, a non-binding document that will nevertheless see the unaccountable chatbot maker thrusting its technology into any area of the UK public sector that smells vaguely like money.
Ain’t life grand. For its part, the UK’s Labour government says this is all part of its plans to build the country into an AI powerhouse: DSIT will work with OpenAI to identify areas where “advanced AI models” can be used, and the company will also somehow be involved in so-called “AI growth zones.”
“AI will be fundamental in driving the change we need to see across the country,” says technology secretary Peter Kyle. “This partnership will see more of [OpenAI’s] work taking place in the UK, creating high-paid tech jobs, driving investment in infrastructure, and crucially giving our country agency over how this world-changing technology moves forward.”
If this all sounds like largely meaningless verbiage, welcome to the wonderful crossover between politicians and the daft promises AI companies have been making for years. I don’t see how this gives the UK any agency at all, beyond the freedom to pay Altman and his cronies eye-watering sums of public money for tech that doesn’t do any of those things.
“AI is a core technology for nation building that will transform economies and deliver growth,” said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in a statement. “Britain has a strong legacy of scientific leadership and its government was one of the first to recognize the potential of AI through its AI Opportunities Action Plan. Now it’s time to deliver on the plan’s goals by turning ambition to action and delivering prosperity for all.”
Oh please: AI is going to usher in prosperity for all?!? Altman just says what he likes, and the cash keeps rolling in. The UK government has already committed £1 billion to building more data centers in the country, as well as another £750 million for building a supercomputer in Edinburgh, but at least in those cases it’s concrete infrastructure that definitely will result in jobs.
Among the various pie-in-the-sky schemes are also some deeply concerning AI-based developments. In April the Guardian reported that the UK government is developing a “murder prediction” algorithm which it hopes can identify the members of the population most likely to become killers (the government unconvincingly claims this is merely a research project). That’s as dystopian as it gets, but it already exists.
Thankfully not everyone’s convinced. A round of applause please for Wayne Holmes, a straight-talking professor from University College London’s Knowledge Lab.
“Policymakers and idiots around the world are just getting sucked into this hype-fest, believing the nonsense that these people are saying, that this is going to sort everything, can help solve all the problems of the world, and cancer is going to be solved in three weeks, poverty in five weeks,” Holmes told The Register.
“It’s just utter, utter drivel and neoliberal nonsense. OpenAI and others like it—terrible, terrible companies, and to invest or to have a memorandum of understanding with them is just crazy. OpenAI is an incredibly unstable company that could collapse at any time. They are just working really hard to enhance their immediate value. And then clearly this memorandum is going to help them in that project, because they’re just interested in making as much money as quickly as they can, because, in my opinion, they know that they’re hitting a brick wall.”
Tell us what you really think professor: and he does! Holmes says the technology itself is “fundamentally flawed” and is “never going to be really improved any time soon.”
“Are these tools fun to play with? Absolutely,” says Holmes. “Do they do silly and interesting things? Yes, they do. Do they do anything that I personally would trust? Not in a million years. So the idea that our government is going to trust it is just absurd.”
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