---
title: "The government’s announcement today about 'unleashing' Ai raises several questions for me."
url: https://sam-page.com/thinking/the-governments-announcement-today-about-unleashing-ai-raises-several-questions
date: 2025-01-13
author: Sam Page
type: Post or article
categories: [Emerging tech and AI]
reading_time: 2 min
summary: "I'm desperately trying to embrace and see the positive in it – for example: the Government is at least talking about Ai openly, they are thinking about how it might help public servants,…"
first_published: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn%3Ali%3Ashare%3A7284642253610844161
---

# The government’s announcement today about 'unleashing' Ai raises several questions for me.

I'm desperately trying to embrace and see the positive in it – for example: the Government is at least talking about Ai openly, they are thinking about how it might help public servants, and they are recognising that it can help improve our lives, for example diagnosing cancer more quickly.

![](https://sam-page.com/img/thinking/the-governments-announcement-today-about-unleashing-ai-raises-several--li1.webp)

However, the bulk of the announcement seems to be rather full of hot air, verging on amusing, and potentially even dangerous at times. For example:

"AI will be fed through cameras" - that doesn't make any sense.

“we will test and understand AI before we regulate it” - I’m not particularly looking forward to how these unregulated tests play out. There’s a need for better guardrails from day one in my view.

What worries me the most is that I believe they are desperately trying to solve economic problems through Ai, using a sticky plaster approach.

I think this risks creating a world that people don’t actually want to live in.

Someone needs to take a step back and think about the direction of travel, and the principles around this. What will actually add value to our lives? What will lead to people being happier, not unhappier? What will create better meaningful connections, well-being and purpose for us all?

At the moment the trend is going in the wrong direction.

Without that direction being set,  phrases such as these are meaningless: make AI "work for working people" and "we're going to make AI work for everyone in our country". How are we going to ensure it does that?

I'm hopeful we can solve these challenges if we start using some human-first, rather than technology-first, thinking. Happy to help Keir Starmer.

What do you think? Are you reassured, scared, indifferent?

Image created on Dall-E (just in case you couldn't tell).