UK Officials Said AI Would Add £400 Billion to the Economy. That Figure Mainly Came From Google

For the last two years, the UK government has been telling the British public that the country could receive an economic boost of £400 billion, thanks to AI, a figure intended to calm fears that the technology would lead to sweeping job losses and even an economic crash.

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But the UK AI minister admitted last week that figure was significantly higher than the government’s actual projections after it was revealed that assessment came solely from a report commissioned by Google, and that its own estimation of AI’s economic benefit was less than a third of that £400 billion figure.n

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AI minister Kanishka Narayan, answering a parliamentary question on the issue, said that AI adoption and data investment could add £55 billion to £140 billion to the UK economy by 2030, bringing the central estimate to £120 billion. But even this “more recent assessment,” he said, was a “hugely uncertain” estimate.

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Narayan said the £400b figure “was drawn from a publicly available 2023 report commissioned by Google and produced by Public First,” a British consultancy firm now referred to as PF Global.

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Responding to WIRED’s questions about the difference between the figures, PF Global’s head of economics, Jonathan Dupont, said the…

Original source: https://www.wired.com/

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