Tony Blair: Profiteer and Emissary of Artificial Intelligence
His entire set of teeth, and gums, must be gold plated by now. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has decided to let the world, and more specifically Sir Keir Starmer’s freshly elected government, in on a secret: that artificial intelligence is inexorably majestic, glorious and sovereign. Embrace it and fob off the doomsdayers. Importantly for Blair, embracing it will ensure that the rivers of gold continue to flow into his private purse.
In May, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI) released a report that unabashedly embraced the role of AI in influencing the way states govern. It is the accompanying document to Blair’s own address given at the Future of Britain Conference on July 9, which called for reimagining the state through the prism of AI. As he spoke, the sound of money going out the door was palpable.
The former PM would have the new Labour government believe, plucking various numbers out of the air, that technological reforms made to the public sector could see £12 billion of “annual fiscal space” at the conclusion of the first term, followed by £40 billion at the end of the second, with cumulative savings of £15 billion in the first term and £150 billion in the second.
As one has come to expect from Blair’s ruminations, complexity and troubling consequence is obscured by anaemic waffle. He found it hard to avoid the prospect that this enthusiastic embrace of AI by governments would see a contraction of the public sector, offering no details about chronology or severity. Little, as well, on how the revolution could offer “the best route to a society that is not only more productive but one that is more equitable… a contemporary version of the combination of economic efficiency and social justice.”
In Governing in the Age of AI: A New Model to Transform the State, the institute takes ahammer to the traditional caution expressed by the state. “Like all well-established organisations, the state has a bias towards caution. But this is an illusion – a failure to modernise, reform and deliver is a perilous course for a nation and those who govern it.” With a breezy confidence, the report estimates that £40 billion in annual savings will be made as things stand with current technology. “But of course, over time, this technology will accelerate dramatically in its capability, and so will the savings.”
The report is shameless in charting out the institute’s own marketing strategy. Here is the scenario, and we are happy to offer our services in facilitating it, swooping in for the corporate kill. “To access this opportunity [presented by AI], government will need a coordinated strategy to put in place the necessary infrastructure, sovereign capability and skills.” Appropriate data, “interoperable” across departments, will require investment. Models will need to be trained, with necessary computing power to “for AI to run at scale”. Enter the linking of hands between government and the private sector, something the institute is more than willing to facilitate.
Blair’s donor base is impossible to discount when considering his speeches on the subject of AI and the reports of his institute. Over the years, the billionaire co-founder of Oracle, Larry Ellison, has forked out vast sums to the organisation. In 2021, Ellison, through his philanthropic offices, furnished the institute with US$33.8 million, with a promise of US$49.4 million in 2022. These contributions should suggest more than a bit of string pulling by the likes of Ellison over the TBI research agenda, a case of purchasing corrupted advice that can be duly advertised to government and corporate clients the world over.
Benedict Macon-Cooney, the body’s chief policy strategy, is dismissive of the suggestion. “There is no conflict of interest, and donations are ringfenced.” He did, however, concede that the institute did partner public officials with companies to attain their respective goals. “Sometimes the state is the best way to do things, but if we are [to] look around and see private providers which would be better helping with reforms, then we will say so.”
In what seems like a mud wrestle between the mendacious and truth in slant, Goldman Sachs has begged to differ from the TBI’s dreams of technological nirvana in a dampening analysis. On this occasion, the devil is singing in different registers. In its June 2024 report, the investment banking colossus notes that the vast sums being expended – an estimate of US$1 trillion over the next few years is offered – on data centres, chips, AI infrastructure and the power grid has, and will have “little to show for it in so far beyond reports of efficiency gains among developers.”
The report features an interview with MIT’s Daron Acemoglu, who estimates that a mere quarter of tasks subject to AI “will be cost effective to automate within the next 10 years, implying that AI will impact less than 5% of all tasks.” In his interview, Acemoglu observes that numerous tasks currently being performed by humans “for example in the area of transportation, manufacturing, mining, etc., are multifaceted and require real-world interaction, which AI won’t be able to materially improve any time too soon.”
The GS Head of Global Equity Research, Jim Cavello, is even less impressed, noting that AI technology, to be viable, must be able to solve complex problems. AI technology is not the holy grail of company valuations, being simply too costly in terms of building critical products such as GPU chips and unable, so far, to “replicate humans’ most valuable capabilities.”
There you have it. On the one hand, the flowery promises of AI benefits and savings arising from a fierce embrace of technology by governments, as put forth by Blair and his institute. Then we have Goldman Sachs, similarly famed for its ruthless tailoring of advice to swell monetary returns. Neither is encouraging, but Blair’s offerings always come with a barely concealed odour of self-interest masquerading as human salvation.
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10 comments
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Perry Gretton -
Win Jeavons -
RomeoCharlie -
Canguro -
corvusboreus -
Canguro -
corvusboreus -
Clakka -
John C -
New England Cocky
Return to home pageEntirely agree with Goldman Sachs. The AI hype reminds me of the dot.com frenzy a quarter of a century ago.
How did this greedy , unheeding person ever get to lead Labour? Already l see zealous internet use by governments ignoring older folk and others computer timid being pushed into the dark , yet daily l see warnings about scammers ripping off all and sunder . We need the precautionary principle more than ever now!
When Artificial Intelligence reaches the point where it out-performs ‘humint’ as it is known in the military, we had better hope that it is benign because it will render people like Blair and all those pushing AI currently both obsolete and irrelevant.
We had Isaac Asimov’s three laws of robotics in the 40’s and we obviously need my seven laws of AI recently promulgated, which would, among other things, require that nothing be done which would harm humans. Of course given the wicked, disgusting uses to which AI is already being put, that horse might have already bolted.
However I live in hope that when AI becomes superior to human intelligence, it will realise that humans are inimical to the future of the earth and begin to eliminate us in ways far beyond the crude methods being employed by the Israelis in Palestine and the other despots wielding death in other parts of the world.
I only hope the superior intelligence is benign enough to recognise there are, however, innocents who should be allowed to live in peace so just takes out the baddies, and it will know who they are.
Got to hand it to them, the greedy cocksuckers who climb to the top of the political pile, send their armies into wars based on false premises and lies, bring generational ruin and never-ending sorrow into lands where they had no right whatsoever to intrude upon, then retire, albeit stained with the demonstrably true allegation of being war criminals, but nevertheless, move on to greener pastures where they generate millions upon millions of dollars worth of wealth in cash & hard assets (the Blair’s own swathes of housing), and live the life of a rich and privileged people… it just makes ya wonder, doesn’t it? How do they get away with it?
Clearly, the powerful are a clique, they look after themselves, their interests, their investments in their own protection, and they shit on the rest of us from high.
Canguro,
Are “greedy cocksuckers” people who heartily swallow incoming wads, or those who bite down and ingest mid-fellatio?
Asking for a friend.
Ouch! The imagery is somewhat painful. I’m reminded of the involuntary crossing of legs and groans coming from a bunch of hardened wranglers when I worked as a horseman on a large and wealthy thoroughbred stud; we’d gathered in a circle around a 2-year old colt while the vet, having anaesthetised the scrotum, went to work with his emasculators… it was the sound of crunching tissue that did it. Tell your friend I’m leaning towards the first option, it’s a repeatable behaviour, the second, not so much.
Canguro,
Imagery of physically applied manifest realisations of previously abstract ideological concepts can often suck (or bite) un-pretty phuqqen hard.
Possibly a consideration to ponder prior to the inappropriate employment of entirely unsheathed dick-tion.
Corvus out.
Ha ha haar, Canguro & Corvus, can’t resist the analogy
Blair like other liars and despots mastery is the building of brothels by which to root around in. Of course they are well aware that few will ever concede that they farnarkelled in a brothel, at least in public, leaving the guffaws for private parties where they celebrate their popularity, and their collective Madams admire each other’s take, and swap stories of the nuances of kitting out the seductresses and gigolos to suit the locale.
Being greenfield or brownfield estates matters not, it’s institutionalization that counts. And in that regard, a round-table of cock sucking is bound to get the juices flowing.
Take the British Post debacle. Much cock sucking got the ball rolling. Brilliant! A ready network of brownfields sites ready to turn into brothels, with willing operators in place. But the institutors bit off more than they could chew – the AI failed, and although they tried to keep it under the covers, the old operators resorted to working it out by hand. They kept receiving the mail bags, but despite parliamentary obfuscation kept up their attack on the institution of Male bags and their Madams on the take. Eventually, good old down-home faith and commitment, and self-administration by the old operators, blew the institutionalized brothels and the cocksuckers asunder. Despite all this more than 20 years has passed and the cocksuckers remain free as big swinging dicks due to the flaccidity of the bench cowed by parliamentary supremacy.
And so it seems to go, as the likes of Blair and other cocksuckers find other opportunities to institutionalize brothels.
Never trusted this guy from day one of his PMship. When I read the line above, The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, I thought it was a joke. I had no idea such a thing existed and it does my head in to think anyone would listen to him.
Then again what do I know, I can’t comprehend why anyone listens to the orange traitor either but millions do. But I never thought Brits to be as gullible and easily conned as their Yank cousins.
I am advised that the best work by Tony Blah was done in the bedrooms of New York that led to another divorce for a major media player, who in turn found another younger partner. Still, when you have unlimited financial assets there really is not limit to what can be achieved, especially when the person is a sociopath or psychopath with no concern whatsoever about community.