Rishi Sunak’s big speech this week was easily lampooned. Having accused Keir Starmer of ‘doomsterism’, the Prime Minister warned that Britain’s most dangerous years lay ahead, and talked of the threat from ‘colluding authoritarian states’.
Less attention was paid to the part of his speech about artificial intelligence, which was in fact genuinely optimistic. As well as bringing greater freedom, choice and opportunity, AI could double productivity ‘in the next decade’, he said.
As well as bringing greater freedom, choice and opportunity, AI could double our productivity in a decade
Imagine, he went on, a world in which every teacher is free to spend more time with struggling students, and in which a single picture of your eyes can not only detect blindness but also predict other diseases such as heart failure and Parkinson’s. Given the pace of technological innovation, this is entirely plausible.
OpenAI released its new model this week, GPT-4o, which responds to voice, images and videos, not just typed commands.
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