Labour’s funding in AI isn’t as intelligent because it thinks it’s | Synthetic intelligence (AI)

There are at the least three main considerations to lift with the federal government’s obvious betting the way forward for the UK on so-called synthetic intelligence (‘Mainlined into UK’s veins’: Labour pronounces large public rollout of AI, 12 January).

First, as Prof Shannon Vallor on the College of Edinburgh has identified in her e book The AI Mirror, generative AI shouldn’t be inventive; it solely appears to be like backward. It could solely remix and reproduce what we now have performed earlier than, the identical errors, failures and biases that have gotten us into our present mess.

Second, there’s the query of sources. One research suggests the identical work performed by AI programs can use 33 instances as a lot vitality as a standard program; Eire is already seeing a few third of its electrical energy going into datacentres. How a lot AI can the planet afford?

Third, if the federal government’s extraordinarily austerity-limited sources are directed in direction of shifting into AI, then it’s not really tackling the urgent issues of poverty, horrible public well being and environmental destruction: altering processes does nothing in itself to ship outcomes.

You possibly can add in privateness and information management considerations, safety, resilience – and a priority about this authorities following the final in clinging desperately to rhetoric about “world-leading”. How about we give attention to delivering a wholesome, functioning democracy and society, fairly than making an attempt to “beat” another nation.
Natalie Bennett
Inexperienced occasion, Home of Lords

It seems out of your report that Labour’s embrace of “renewables and small modular nuclear reactors” shouldn’t be supposed to switch the vitality sources that offer our present wants, and thus assist us transfer to a extra humane and sustainable lifestyle on our fragile planet. It’s as a substitute geared toward fuelling “energy-hungry AI programs” and being onside with the world’s largest know-how firms.

A lot for coping with the elemental causes of local weather change, that are rooted in our obsession with progress, and the infinite progress in consumption wanted to maintain it. That is why our most stunning valleys and landscapes are to be despoiled with miles of giant pylons – to allow Microsoft and others, who already exert large affect over our lives, to grow to be even richer and extra dominant whereas the remainder of us simply have to simply accept the dangers that AI poses to our livelihoods and our safety.
Christopher Tanner
St Ives, Cambridgeshire

The federal government is putting immense religion in AI as a method of bettering the economic system and residing situations within the UK(Why Starmer and Reeves are pinning their hopes on AI to drive progress in UK, 12 January).

It would assist the Treasury in the event that they requested a well known search engine for recommendation on the right way to enhance and finance public companies. Its AI abstract’s first advice is to take a position extra in public well being, youth companies and advantages and to extend taxation. I’m not holding my breath.
Philip Ward
Sheffield

I’m afraid most of us don’t want to be part of the Labour genuflection earlier than the altar of AI. We foresee the roles misplaced and the private info shared with a number of the planet’s extra unsavoury characters. Palantir, chaired by the Trump acolyte billionaire Peter Thiel, already runs the NHS’s federated information platform. How lengthy earlier than the friends in UnitedHealth entry the small print to flog us medical health insurance? Rachel Reeves might dream that she will now ask Alexa the right way to “develop” the economic system, however we mere mortals can nonetheless recognise snake oil once we sniff it.

The perceptive AI commentator Helen Beetham has written: “Regardless of AI’s identified biases and colonial histories, its solely predictable use to focus on ladies and minorities for violence, to erode democratic debate and degrade human rights; and regardless of the poisonous politics of AI’s homeowners and CEOs, together with outright assaults on larger training – nonetheless individuals will stroll across the herd of elephants within the room to get to the intense field marked ‘AI’ within the nook.”
Kevin Donovan
Birkenhead, Merseyside

It’s heartening that AI will now be used for recognizing potholes, as clearly previously councils have had such hassle discovering them regardless of all the actual intelligence acquired.
Giles du Boulay
Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire