‘The political stakes of AI are rising, and Labour needs answers fast’

AI, once seen as a niche technocratic concern, is becoming a mass political issue. As AI gets more powerful and the future of our economy becomes increasingly tied to a handful of technology giants, the backlash is just getting started.

Anti-AI sentiment is coming from several directions, including environmental opposition to data centres, creatives’ protests on copyright, and parents’ activism on child safety. Campaign movements have formed like ‘PauseAI’ and ‘QuitGPT’, and this month has brought worrying signs that this could become violent with two attacks on OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

All of this is happening before the biggest disruption from AI has even arrived. AI’s capabilities are improving exponentially while AI scheming is making safety testing harder. The arrival of AI model ‘Mythos’ this month is a sign of further change to come as even AI companies decide their products are too powerful to release publicly. With further jumps in AI capability expected this year, public resistance should only be expected to grow.

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In theory, progressives might be able to channel public pressure towards much needed change. The gains from AI have been far too narrowly concentrated within a handful of companies and, as AI spreads quickly through our economy, public demand could force a conversation around spreading the economic upside.

Pressure could also help put to rest a certain form of scepticism which has been common on the left, namely that AI is simply fancy autocomplete or a big tech marketing ploy which will fall flat like crypto or the metaverse. It is not, and taking AI’s more extreme risks seriously matters.

Yet in practice, public pressure is more likely to just make AI policy more reactive as politicians chase the public mood. The US is ahead of us on this, and their experience shows us what works and what to avoid.

For US voters, AI rose in salience more than any other issue last year and politicians are taking that seriously. On the left, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are treating AI that matches human intelligence as a near-term possibility and have made it a major campaign topic, supporting pro-worker policies and efforts to slow AI development. And on the right, some within the Trump movement are pivoting fast, promoting a populist AI agenda that would help them ride any tidal wave of anti-AI sentiment.

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Progressives can learn from this. Politicians in the US are taking the public’s justified concerns seriously and honing a political message on AI. UK politicians need to do the same, changing more than just their rhetoric to show the public they are acting in their interests and prepared to stand up to big tech.

Yet at the same time, we can’t export the US approach. Treating AI as a harm to be resisted might look appealing, especially if AI backlash builds, but the harsh truth is it just doesn’t work for a country like the UK. We cannot afford to be left out of AI’s economic upside as a globalised services economy that is highly dependent on US tech investment. Policies that limit AI development or shut us off from big tech risk making the UK’s voice irrelevant in DC and San Francisco where the future of AI is really being shaped.

There are other ways to get serious about AI as a political force. Namely, through an agenda that focuses on shaping the technology in the public interest through redistributing the economic upsides, incentivising AI firms to minimise their climate footprint, and protecting workers from labour market shocks.

This is not incompatible with the current Labour government’s agenda to grow the UK’s AI sector, but instead a much-needed parallel focus.

As our government does all it can to increase the UK’s leverage over AI, progressive pressure should be focused on ensuring our government uses their power to shape AI rather than resist it.   

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