Civil Service: Artificial Intelligence Productivity Gains
Debate between Baroness Winterton of Doncaster and Lord Vallance of Balham(3 days, 10 hours ago)
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Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
The figure of £573 million is, of course, forward spend, so that is not what has been spent; it is a commitment over the next few years. It is important that we measure this. Guidance on how to measure the impact of AI tools was issued last year; there is a rigorous process for doing that. On the 26 minutes that has been picked up by the Copilot study, it is of course a general AI tool. Much greater savings come with specific uses in specific areas, which will not be general across the Civil Service.
The noble Lord is quite right to point out that time saving is not productivity, but what we do know from studies elsewhere and across business is that, when you get those time savings, about half of it goes on core tasks, about a quarter is on other strategic and creative work and about 25% goes on enhanced well-being. That is what we might expect as a result. There is a lot to do to make sure that we implement this properly across the Civil Service.
Baroness Winterton of Doncaster (Lab)
My Lords, would my noble friend the Minister also consider assessing productivity gains from basing civil servants in the regions rather than in London? In my view, as an ex-regional Minister for Yorkshire and the Humber, that would be an effective way of ensuring that the Government were focused on reducing regional inequalities and encouraging regional growth.
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for the question. I am not going to try to add the regional Civil Service to my brief, but I will say that this is exactly the sort of area where AI is rather good at working out whether there is a benefit, because it can spot patterns that are difficult to spot individually or by human endeavour. This is a place where you could begin to see what the real impacts are and what drives success rates in the regions.
Artificial Intelligence: Regulation
Debate between Baroness Winterton of Doncaster and Lord Vallance of Balham(10 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
The noble Viscount makes an important point. This will be global; there is no question about it. Therefore, there needs to be some degree of interoperability between different regions in terms of the regulations put in place. At the moment, as I said, of the two most advanced, the US is the biggest AI nation in the world and is developing a regulation along similar lines to ours, we believe. The EU is of course the most regulated place in the world for AI and we need to work out, in consultation over the next months, how to make sure that we work out where the areas of interoperability will lie.
Baroness Winterton of Doncaster (Lab)
My Lords, does my noble friend the Minister agree that any advisory committees on regulation of AI should include smaller companies involved in the sector and also representation from the regions?
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
This is an area where there were something like 100 new start-ups in the last year alone. We have something like 4,000 small companies. It is an area where small companies are critically important and must be involved in the discussion. It is worth remembering that some of the enormous companies were small companies not very long ago in this space; it is moving fast. I will also take this opportunity to say how fantastic it is that, in our own country, we had a Nobel prize awarded to Demis Hassabis for his extraordinary work and that of his colleague John Jumper at Google DeepMind.