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LONDON — Artificial intelligence will spark “revolutionary change,” former British Prime Minister Tony Blair warned Wednesday, as he urged politicians around the world not to get caught short by the rapidly-advancing tech.
“How you understand, master and harness this technology revolution will define the place of this country and the shape of the world,” said Blair, who was speaking at a Chatham House event in London.
Blair — who led the U.K. from 1997 to 2007 and remains influential on the current opposition Labour Party — said he was sometimes asked by people on the center-left, “how can we be ambitious? What’s our mission in this world of turmoil?”
“This is your mission,” Blair replied. “This is going to change everything.”
The future of politics will not, Blair argued, be about “a little bit more on tax, a little bit less on tax, a little bit more on spending, a little bit less on spending.” Instead, he said: “It’s going to be about understanding [AI] and dealing with it.”
Blair and the former Conservative leader William Hague — once his rival for the U.K. premiership — recently co-authored a report claiming that the British government should fire its AI advisors, accusing them of failing to keep the country up to speed with rapid AI advances.
Britain’s AI Council was disbanded shortly after Blair’s think tank report was released, although it is unclear whether that call had any bearing on this decision.
Speaking at the Chatham House event, Blair agreed that some kind of new AI regulatory agency was needed, “subject to getting really good people to run it.”
And he urged politicians to gain a better understanding of AI: “The nature of the dialogue between government and not just the people in the sector, but outside, has got to be so much richer and [deeper].”
On his hopes for the U.K.’s planned summit on AI safety — much trumpeted by current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak — Blair said: “What I hope we will get is an exposing of the political class to the full magnitude of this challenge.”
