Failure to grasp the potential benefits of automation in the workplace will only hurt Scotland’s economy and standard of living.
New age of enlightenment
We are firmly in a new age of enlightenment driven by artificial intelligence. You may have missed it, but Ai solutions have been embedded in our lives for more than two decades. However, public interest in the technology was really piqued only with the launch of generative Ai solutions such as ChatGPT in November 2022. Now the Ai toothpaste is out of the tube, with Ai assistants embedded in search engines and a button marked “help me with my homework” appearing on Google apps on my son’s phone.
Scottish Ai Summit
Given the clear impact of Ai in our modern lives, it was with some disbelief that I opened my invitation to the Scottish Ai Summit in Edinburgh. The summit on 28th March 2023 is being staged by the Scottish Ai Alliance, a partnership between the Scottish government and Edinburgh University’s Data Lab. But what should be a beacon for technology adoption and the opportunity to re-imagine our public services and propel growth in the Scottish economy appears to have been reduced to a sermon on how the Ai sky is falling on our heads.
Self-determining
What is incredibly ironic is that the agenda’s recurring theme of guarding against unwanted bias has become self-determining. With scant representation from industry Ai practitioners, the Scottish Ai Summit will not communicate the powerful real-world societal and economic benefits that Ai can bring and is introducing the very bias and lack of trust that it is warning against.
Contrasting with the US
Contrast this with a similar event in the United States, Imagine Ai Live ’24, also on March 28, where the focus on embracing Ai technology and maximising its potential could not be more different. Setting aside the hubris of our American cousins for a moment and the glitzy Las Vegas venue, the structural approach to maximising the adoption of Ai at all levels of an organisation, from board level to shop floor, is truly remarkable. The advocacy here is delivering the maximum benefits from accelerating an Ai-first strategy, not one of risk aversion. Ethics, governance and data privacy do feature prominently, but the debate is much more balanced and focused on delivering game-changing productivity and effectiveness responsibly.
The rewards
The rewards on offer are truly staggering. A report by industry analysts at McKinsey claims that, since the advent of generative Ai, the percentage of work hours that may be automated by next year has jumped from 50 to 70 per cent. In the real world this means 50 per cent of administrative work could be automated today, without the spectre of poorly controlled bias in decision-making. The uplift of a further 20 per cent comes from an enhanced ability to process unstructured information such as text in an email.
Impact of Ai
As The Times has reported previously, responsible adoption of Ai can have remarkable impact, with Octopus Energy automating the handling of more than a third of its incoming emails, with an increase in customer satisfaction. In a local government setting, such a transformation could plug growing funding gaps and enable resources to be refocused on policy priorities without resorting to blunt cuts to essential services such as school crossing patrols and pothole maintenance.
Missing an opportunity
I am truly stunned that public sector leaders are not racing towards Ai and automation technology interventions to not only balance budgets but deliver targeted services with better outcomes and at significantly lower cost to the people of Scotland. Unless we change our negative bias towards Ai, Scotland’s standard of living and faltering economy will slip further into decline and the country risks obscurity in a global competitive marketplace.
David Cameron is a Co-Founder of Aivantor Ltd