Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2: I'm joined by Alex Burkhart, UK Cabinet Office Minister leading
Speaker 2: on AI in the public sector. I want to start
Speaker 2: out with your role in artificial intelligence. This role wouldn't
Speaker 2: exist even as two or three years ago, and need
Speaker 2: to live in the United Kingdom. We've seen this government,
Speaker 2: led by the Prime Minister Richie Sunek, really want to
Speaker 2: invest and hone AI even within the government. I know
Speaker 2: you're in the beta mode of this red box. Tell
Speaker 2: us a little bit about what you're doing, what you're
Speaker 2: focused on, and how the government could potentially harness this.
Speaker 3: Thanks Amory, thank you for having me on and it's
Speaker 3: great to be in New York to talk about the
Speaker 3: work we're doing in the UK government at the moment.
Speaker 3: As you said, the Prime Minister is really passionate about AI.
Speaker 3: We held the first AI safety summit that the world
Speaker 3: seen last year, very very productive. But the work that
Speaker 3: I'm doing is on how we can deploy AI for
Speaker 3: the public good and that means how we can you know,
Speaker 3: it's about eighteen months ago we sat down and said
Speaker 3: this new technology is emerging potentially one of the great
Speaker 3: leaps forward. How are we going to harness it to
Speaker 3: improve the quality of public services and drive down costs
Speaker 3: for the taxpayer. And there's a number of ways in
Speaker 3: which that's emerging. And the first is that you can
Speaker 3: now automate tasks like never before. And I have you
Speaker 3: mentioned Red Box, which is named after the you know,
Speaker 3: the red ministerial box that British ministers carry around.
Speaker 1: I still hope they'll do that for show and the Yeah.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. But what we now have, what we've been building
Speaker 3: is a tool that can summarize huge documents very very quickly,
Speaker 3: that can relate them to what's been going on in Parliament,
Speaker 3: what's been going on in the press, and can pull
Speaker 3: out kind of key points that ministers need to focus on.
Speaker 3: And that's saving my Private office hundreds of hours. But
Speaker 3: it's also starting to build a tool that is going
Speaker 3: to create institutional memory. Recreate institutional memory in our government departments.
Speaker 3: So you know, when we're starting out on a project,
Speaker 3: we'll be able to ask, how we tried something like
Speaker 3: this before, why didn't we carry on with it? You
Speaker 3: know what was good about it? It's a huge resource
Speaker 3: of documentation that's currently lying unused in government is going
Speaker 3: to come back into play.
Speaker 2: So two questions immediately come to mind, one talent and
Speaker 2: the other security.
Speaker 1: Let's start with talent first.
Speaker 2: If you work in AI, you can get paid handsomely
Speaker 2: going to say open AI. How do you attract that
Speaker 2: talent to say, come work as a civil servant.
Speaker 3: It's a great question. We were really worried about this
Speaker 3: at the start because we can't pay that money. And
Speaker 3: you know, I've got a really great head of the program,
Speaker 3: Laura Gilbert, who's out in New York with me at
Speaker 3: the moment, and she said, as long as we can
Speaker 3: pay something, but more than we pay our normal civil servants.
Speaker 3: What we have is data. We have really good data,
Speaker 3: lots of centralized data. And if you are, you know,
Speaker 3: an AI addict, if you're one of these super smart,
Speaker 3: crazy CLIs people who wants to get involved, the thing
Speaker 3: you want to play with is data. And so we've
Speaker 3: we've been looking at huge quantities of data and things
Speaker 3: like public prescriptions health service, looking how we can improve
Speaker 3: the quality of prescriptions, drive down costs. We've been looking
Speaker 3: at how we can eliminate fraud and error in the
Speaker 3: benefit system. We have two hundred and eighty billion pound
Speaker 3: benefit and pension system, and we currently employ thousands and
Speaker 3: thousands of people to check for fraud. We think we're
Speaker 3: going to be able to vastly reduce that and improve.
Speaker 1: So attracting the talent hasn't been an issue.
Speaker 3: No, No, we've we've been really pleasantly surprised that loads
Speaker 3: of people have applied and they passed our very very
Speaker 3: stringent tests to get in.
Speaker 1: The one concern as well as security.
Speaker 2: You put all of this now, documents that live in
Speaker 2: a cloud, you're working more with AI.
Speaker 1: How do you safeguard that to say adversaries?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a central question and we have a very
Speaker 3: effective security service in the UK and we're constantly learning
Speaker 3: from partners. I was outing talent in Estonia right on
Speaker 3: the fringes of NATO a few weeks ago, learning from
Speaker 3: them because they were party to some enormous cyber attacks
Speaker 3: a few years ago and have become very very resilient.
Speaker 3: So it's uppermost in our mind when we're vetting people,
Speaker 3: but also when we're building systems to make sure that
Speaker 3: they're not you, that they can't be attacked by enemy operator.
Speaker 2: If you use AI in the defense sector in the
Speaker 2: UK government, how important is it that all that technology comes.
Speaker 1: In house, not out of house. Well because of these concerns.
Speaker 3: No, no, I think it's not just defense. Right when
Speaker 3: we were starting out, we could easily have gone and
Speaker 3: picked a number of big companies, big UK companies have
Speaker 3: fantastic a sector in London. But we wanted to understand
Speaker 3: this technology ourselves. So we've hired this cracked team of
Speaker 3: thirty people going up to seventy who are going to
Speaker 3: be able to build bespoke systems for us Now. In
Speaker 3: the future, I think there'll be a case of some
Speaker 3: stuff we will build ourselves and use many times, some
Speaker 3: stuff we will build bespoke for particular departments, perhaps like defense,
Speaker 3: and some things we will buy in. But having people
Speaker 3: who actually know how it works and know what government's
Speaker 3: needs are I think is central to getting this revolution right.
Speaker 2: I know you're in New York, so you're missing all
Speaker 2: the morning press in the UK after a critical election
Speaker 2: last night and you saw the Bellwether parliamentary seat that
Speaker 2: the Conservatives lost, do you honestly think the Conservative Party
Speaker 2: if the elections are going to be held this year?
Speaker 2: At some point I know the Prime Minister said at
Speaker 2: the second half of the year, do you think the
Speaker 2: current conservaives will be able to hold onto power.
Speaker 3: I do think they will be able to and I'll
Speaker 3: tell you right, look, we've had a tough night. The
Speaker 3: truth is that in twenty twenty one, when this cycle
Speaker 3: of elections was last on, we had a vaccine bounce
Speaker 3: that was a very good year for us. We always
Speaker 3: suspected we might come down. But there is a silver
Speaker 3: lining to this cloud, and it's the fact that Ben
Speaker 3: Houchin are mayor in Teesside, in the northeast, traditionally quite
Speaker 3: a deprived part of the country, which under the Conservatives
Speaker 3: is now flourishing. He's won, he's held on, He's done
Speaker 3: a very good job there, and I think when it
Speaker 3: comes to the election and people actually have to make
Speaker 3: a choice about who they want to see in power
Speaker 3: for the next five years. Is it going to be
Speaker 3: the Prime Minister and the Conservatives that has got us
Speaker 3: through COVID, that has seen off inflation and the energy
Speaker 3: crisis and has a plan for the future, or is
Speaker 3: it going to be a Labor party that really has
Speaker 3: no plan and no agenda. I think they're going to
Speaker 3: come with us.
Speaker 2: Do now regret though potentially removing Boris Johnson. Just from
Speaker 2: an electability point of view, No.
Speaker 3: I don't because Boris certainly had his strengths, but things
Speaker 3: weren't working out and he made some mistakes and we
Speaker 3: couldn't have that those mistakes haven't happened.
Speaker 2: Besides Ai, which I know the Prime Minister is really
Speaker 2: focused on, but a lot of that has feels a
Speaker 2: little bit like it's not tangible yet to voters and
Speaker 2: the electorate. What does Rischie Sunak need to do. Number
Speaker 2: one thing he needs to do going into this election.
Speaker 3: So I think there are some really good stories to tell.
Speaker 3: I mentioned t side up in the Northeast when I
Speaker 3: was the Minister for Skills. I was lucky enough to
Speaker 3: be part of this great piece of work where Ben Houchin,
Speaker 3: the mayor, persuaded the energy companies to come and build
Speaker 3: hydrogen plants on the condition that they offered training courses
Speaker 3: for young boys and girls in the local colleges. So
Speaker 3: you have, you know, the government setting up a free
Speaker 3: pot and tea side, the mayor bringing in the business,
Speaker 3: and then the business securing the training places so that
Speaker 3: young people get those new jobs in their community. And
Speaker 3: that is what we call leveling up in the UK.
Speaker 3: And we're starting to see the fruits of it, you know,
Speaker 3: new business in towns which have been left behind, and
Speaker 3: local people getting those jobs and adding to the prosperity
Speaker 3: of the places where they live. That's something that didn't
Speaker 3: happen under thirteen years of labor. It's happening under the
Speaker 3: Conservatives and I've been proud to be part of it.
Speaker 1: Do you want to break some news. Do you know
Speaker 1: when the election will be?
Speaker 3: Well, i'd love to tell you about the primary.
Speaker 1: I don't know yet. I don't know yet. Okay, all right,
Speaker 1: we'll leave it there. Thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 2: That was Alex Burghart, UK Cabinet Officer Minister leaning on
Speaker 2: AI in the public sector.