Artificial intelligence should be used for the public good or it could worsen inequality and leave some communities poorer, the UK’s opposition leader will warn on Tuesday.
Keir Starmer will also question if Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is doing enough to make the UK a leader in AI.
As Mr Starmer speaks on Tuesday at London Tech Week, two former prime ministers – Tory William Hague and Labour’s Tony Blair – supported plans for a “national laboratory” to test AI and become the “brain” of an international regulator.
On Monday, Mr Sunak challenged industry leaders to tackle the “extraordinary” possibilities created by AI advances to ensure that the UK is a tech capital for the future.
He said he wants to make the UK both the intellectual and geographical home of AI regulation.
Mr Starmer is now offering his own vision for how to address fast-paced technological changes.
“Our country is facing a choice about who benefits from the huge disruption that tech will bring,” he is expected to say.
“Will it be those who already hold wealth and power, or will it be the starter firms trying to break in and disrupt the industry, the patients trying to book an appointment with their GP, the worker using technology to enhance and improve their role?”
He will also argue that despite the UK’s success in science and research, a lack of certainty from the ruling Conservatives and a missing industrial strategy are ensuring that the country’s advantages are being wasted.
Discussing AI, he is also expected to say: “The question facing our country is who will benefit from this disruption? Will it leave some behind, as happened with deindustrialisation across vast swathes of our country?
“Or can it help build a society where everyone is included, and inequalities are narrowed not widened?
“This moment calls for Labour values, of working in partnership with business, driving technology to the public good, and ensuring people and places aren’t left behind.
“Labour would take a whole-economy approach, recognising that tech is not just a sector, but every job and every business must become digital if we are to address the UK’s productivity problem.
“Diffusing the latest technology across our economy and public services will be as important as supporting the latest unicorns.”
Mr Starmer will tell the tech industry audience that Labour would make the harnessing of new technologies central to government.
“I will harness technology as the great accelerator of our five missions for government, working in partnership with business to face the future and deliver growth, prosperity and opportunity across the UK,” he will say.
“We will form a new agenda on digital skills, through our ‘growth and skills’ levy to ensure people are equipped for the jobs of the future.
“Labour’s industrial strategy, combined with good regulation, will secure and create good jobs, and responsible and ethical development of new technology.”
Mr Blair and Mr Hague have called for a “complete realignment”, including an overhaul of government machinery, to respond to the “radically reshaped” society that AI technology is expected to create.
The project would be loosely modelled on the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (Cern) and would aim to ensure the safe use of AI.
The five-year aim of such a laboratory would be to “form the international regulatory function across the AI ecosystem”.
“Society is about to be radically reshaped, requiring a more strategic state and a fundamental change in how we plan for the future,” the joint foreword of the report A New National Purpose: AI Promises a World-Leading Future of Britain said.
“These ideas are intended to help all political parties find the best way forward, with the necessary speed and sense of priority, in a period of dramatic change and opportunity that has already begun.”
Report lead author Benedict Macon-Cooney added: “AI is an era-defining technology and the nations that can harness its potential will be the ones to define the future.
“We’re racing against time and every step and decision has to be taken at speed but with clear goals; to put in place critical, foundational AI infrastructure and to drive the growth of the next generation of superstar companies.”
