Tony Blair should stop fueling the hype around AI

As the world is mired in confusion over the real utility of the rise of artificial intelligence, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has made a strange contribution. Days after his Labour Party was returned to power, his Tony Blair Institute for Global Change hosted a conference on the future of Britain, focused on AI, at which he urged Keir Starmer’s new government to view AI as “the greatest technological revolution since the Industrial Revolution.” But look closely: Blair’s platitudes sound like consultant jargon, and his claims that 40% of the UK’s public sector work could be done by AI come from a dubious source: ChatGPT.

Blair has gone to great lengths to drum up buzz around a technology whose companies are struggling with problems of utility, cost and misinformation. That doesn’t help at a time when tech companies desperately need to better manage expectations of AI. It also does a disservice to the British public sector. Why, for example, would a university graduate want to become an administrator in the National Health Service (NHS) if the former prime minister just said that 40% of their jobs could be automated?