The New Statesman.

We tend to think of artificial intelligence as a tool or something scary, something we can choose to pick up and put down when we want to.

However, AI has already moved well beyond that. It is embedded in the machinery of the British state, drafting legislation,

shaping spending decisions, informing interest rate policy and writing speeches that are delivered

in Parliament. Has Britain handed over political power without ever really deciding to, or without

fully understanding who it is we are giving that power to. At the heart of

this is a sovereignty problem. The models doing the work were built in America or in China by

people with their own interests and their own politics and their own ambitions. This is politics

from the new statesman. I'm Tom McTagg and I'm delighted to be joined by my colleague Will Dunn, who has written

an extraordinary piece in this week's New Statesman drawn upon months of reporting on Westminster's

relationship with AI.

We will link to this piece in the show notes, but please seek it out or pick up a copy of this week's magazine.

Hi, Will.

Hello, Tom.

So let's start from the beginning because this is a complicated subject, but I think at the

heart of it is a kind of simple story about power and who has it.

And your piece opens with the revelation that AI has already made it into our laws.

Now, I think people will find that surprising, but they won't quite know how to understand it, what it means, why it's important.

Can you sort of tell us how this happened and why it is important?

Yeah, so for reasons of source protection, I can't tell if exactly who told the circumstances or who told me,

because a lot of, almost all of the conversations that led to this piece were on

background because people talk more freely in those circumstances.

...