This week, Simon Alexander MP continues thinking about Big Tech and AI, and also promotes a book that stops you looking like a Thicky Thicky Dumb Dumb
‘Do you love A.I.? I love A.I.’
My policy adviser Vish is obsessed with that sentence, even though like me he cannot abide the man who said it, who will be present and incorrect at the Cenotaph this Sunday because (it says here) he was Prime Minister of this country for three years. But what is Artificial Intelligence, and why should we care about it?
Every week some newspaper or website does a feature about how the lunatic machines are taking over the asylum. AI is either generative or destructive, beneficial or apocalyptic, so who better than Baroness Beeban Kidron to guide us down the bumpy track. She’s before the Communications and Digital Lords Select Committee this very afternoon to discuss the Online Safety Act, but before we get to her, might I recommend Ted Gioia, the only man to have started his career as a jazz pianist and ended it as a must-read Substack scribe.
When he wrote about AI at the end of August, Gioia posited ten predictions for AI (‘I love A.I.’). They ranged from the technological – AI-on-AI battles, cartels – to the way humans interact with it as a religious deity to how we need to distinguish between junk food and haute cuisine, when it comes to what we enjoy about art and culture. Gioia also thought that the humble book or handwritten note would be a reliable defence against plagiarism, and that there would be a huge revolt not just from consumers but from within the tech industry, from the folks that brought us Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And not just the ones blowing the whistle so they can get a book deal and a panel appearance.
Gioia’s final two predictions resonated with me: ‘Money always calls the shots, and that’s where the AI crisis will intensify the most. The cash getting invested in bots is beyond anything ever seen before in the history of capitalism; already $3.7tn has been spent, and the outlay is growing by another trillion per year…For less than that amount, Silicon Valley could have acquired every movie studio, every video game company, every major record label, and all the big publishers in the world. And still have plenty of cash left over.’ Gulp.
To counter this, our friendly honest broker, to use the title of his Substack, advises people to go outside and live ‘in the real world. Put your faith in reality, not digital constructs. Connect with actual people. Take a walk in nature. Read a book. Go to a concert. Get a pet. Learn a musical instrument, a foreign language, an artisan skill. Visit a new city, a new country. Volunteer at a school or non-profit. In other words, get a life. That’s something no bot can do for you.’ He’s taken the same thing that Professor Susskind took last week. I hope for the sake of my wallet it’s cheap hooch, not rich vermouth.
From a jazz pianist to a film director: Baroness Beeban Kidron made her name directing movies like the second Bridget Jones movie and that lovely Victoria & Abdul with Judi Dench. This year, Baroness K poured a decade of hopelessness about AI into Users, a book which demands that the horrible bosses of AI – Altman, Zuckerberg, Musk, Thiel, Karp and yes they are all men of a certain age and type – can be overpowered by public and government action.
In her sights are Anthropic, OpenAI and Nvidia; the last of these makes the microchips that power AI (‘I love AI’), and their recent profits came in at $64bn, which would look great if future expenditure wasn’t six times that, with another $160bn invested in data centres. Nvidia have invested plenty more billions in other AI companies, making them the modern-day Facebook…sorry, Meta. As I mentioned last week, Anthropic is set to float for over 7000 times more than the £280m sum being promised to Britain’s AI Security Institute and brand new lab. That’ll show Elon, Sam, Mark, Alex and Peter, the bounders!
Because Em works for me, as well as for the people of my constituency, I asked her to summarise the book in a manner which allows me a) to contribute in the chamber about AI, which I love, and b) to arrange a meeting in PCH with the Baroness so I could tell her how much I enjoyed her early, funny work. To prepare myself, I listened to a couple of her book tour appearances, touring the podcasts and posh event spaces, including with the much-missed Media Confidential. ‘They are hacking our human instincts to keep us online at all times for the purposes of making money’ is how she put those blokes’ goals clearly. ‘And then comes the lobbying.’
It was a mistake, she said correctly, for the Starmer government to cosy up to Trump, then to rename the AI Safety Unit in 2025 (surprise!) as the AI Security Unit. As for the Online Safety Act, which Baroness Kidron helped scrutinise for years in the Other Place, I will paraphrase by saying she is not a fan. I made sure Vish and Em both signed the petition for safe tech, as I did, on the website of Beeban’s 5Rights Foundation. Those five rights are Privacy, Safety, Development, Agency and Participation.
The Foundation is chaired by Sir Peter Wanless, another overachiever who was CEO of the NSPCC after working in the Department of Education in the Blair years (don’t get Beeban started on the former PM either). Through the Foundation, Baroness K seeks to create ‘a digital world fit for children and young people, that they can access creatively, knowledgeably and fearlessly. To this end we fight for systemic change that ensures the digital world caters for them by design and default.’
Feeling overwhelmed should not be normal. Watching videos of people being beheaded shouldn’t either, nor should we accept the status quo when it comes to Big Tech. Interestingly, Baroness K echoes what Daniel Susskind was saying in how, like him, she felt that machines had betrayed her trust: the Susskind family were fans of a history podcast narrated by kids whom it turned out didn’t exist, while Beeban told the Guardian that the moment where the penny dropped was ‘watching a child’s face as she realised that the person who she thought was her friend wasn’t her friend; that the sex acts she’d been doing weren’t for her friend; and that there may have been other people in the room.
‘And I watched her face and I watched her crumble. It was her spirit, it was her trust, it was her sense of who she was, it was her judgment. It was all those things that you need to be a human being, smashed.’ The interviewer well captures her anger here. He also mentions that Beeban’s dad Michael was a Socialist and economist, which informs her politics and activism. Plus, Users has a walk-on cameo from Elton John, who recently called the government ‘absolute losers’ for their stance on copyright.
We must get better at denying our captors the right to our attention, and we ought to lobby politicians (hello there!) to make better laws. And why can tech companies, at governments’ request, censor things to do with Covid misinformation ‘but not child sexual abuse, not abuse against women, racism?’ I can’t think of a reason.
All of this reminds me of the sort of rebellious acts that made the activist and comic Mark Thomas a national treasure to a particular type of person. There’s a little bit of Beeban in Joe Lycett, whose Friday night live shows have been a little chaotic but very British. Then there’s Cody Dahler, who has a book out on Thursday based, really, on his catchphrase ‘But you don’t want to look like a Thicky Thicky Dumb Dumb in front of all your mates!’
I’ve ordered a copy and hope it is under many a tree this Christmas. I’m trying to make ‘T2D2’ catch on as an even shorter catchphrase, and will tell Dahler this when he comes to This Place next. He was at PMQs the other week, actually, and I know some of Em’s friends were quite excited to see him; perhaps even more keen than seeing actual MPs who can actually do something about online safety.
Dahler is an example of the internet being used for good, much as how smokers’ gardens were good in the time before people traded smoking for vaping: it just gives you a slightly different context to how awful the thing is. Dahler’s targets, all with silly names or comparisons to villains, include Peter Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg, the US President and Nigel Farage, whose name is extended to include the part of the body out of which some would say he does most of his talking.
Count Binface is, of course, plugging away, probably having signed a book deal of his own after his summer of fun going up against the Reform UK plc leader. Would you believe Jonathan Pie is on a UK tour this autumn doing his shouty ranty comedy too, and there’s Michael Spicer with his Room Next Door skits which are very good. All of this is in the great British tradition of what I’ve heard is called the Silly Sausage. I asked Em what she understands by that term.
‘Saying “beveragino”?’
‘Yeah but I was thinking more people who are silly.’
‘Oh so basically the entirety of Gemma Collins’ public persona.’
‘Blessed be the GC,’ said Vish as he chomped on a croissant. ‘This coffee is your best so far this month!’
‘It’s the first working day of November, you scamp!’ I admonished Vish as I pulled up an article about Silly Sausage Britain, written before Binface Summer. Here’s Sofie Jenkinson of the climate charity Round Our Way on a term she allegedly coined: ‘The Britain that has a laugh and doesn’t take itself too seriously, but is underpinned by self-deprecation, our kindness toward each other and fairness. This is the Britain of comedians such as Victoria Wood and Bob Mortimer…It’s the adverts for Yorkshire Tea, Tango and Irn-Bru, and it’s the Liz Truss lettuce. It’s 2p arcade machines and queen of “hun culture” Alison Hammond’s laugh.’
‘Half of that is just annoying,’ Vish said.
‘But wait, there’s more!’ I said to his disdain. ‘Louis Theroux rapping. Susan Boyle doing Just One Cornetto. Ainsley Harriott. Boaty McBoatface. Mr Blobby. Em, do you have any idea who Mr Blobby is?’
‘I’m not that young, Al!’
‘Well apparently the woman who brought us Silly Sausage Britain also came up with Mr Blobby Patriotism: “In not taking ourselves seriously, we find our common ground and find a lighter way through when things are really tough…It is a patriotism of taking the piss out of yourself and your mates, but also rolling up your sleeves and helping someone carry a pram up the stairs. Being patriotic isn’t about Britain being perfect, it’s about loving a place because we see ourselves in it and making fun of it because it’s ours.”’
‘And how is this going to help us defeat evil Elon?’
‘If we don’t try, nothing will change. Em, brainstorm some ideas! The sillier, the better.’
Em looked at Vish and I think they were more concerned than enthused. Tough!