As the dust settled on the general election, a labour leader who’d previously secured a landslide majority was hailing the virtues of AI in the public sector. That’s right, Sir Tony Blair’s think tank, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, published a paper this week suggesting the widespread adoption of AI across the UK public sector could save around 20% of workforce time, or £10bn by the end of the new parliament. This follows a study in March this year which found around four in five of the government’s decision-based services are highly automatable. A BBC report this week highlighted the increase in use of chatbots across European government services, including in Portugal, where they are used to answer basic questions covering marriage, divorce, and how to set up a company.
In this week’s data hack roulette, it’s the turn of Ticketmaster customers to spin the wheel (or not). Emails were sent by Ticketmaster to customers in North America warning them to take steps to protect themselves against identity theft and fraud, following a hack in May. Personal details of over 560 million customers were stolen in the hack, with cyber criminals then trying to sell the details online.
K-pop fans have been divided by the latest revelations about the use of AI by some of the genre’s biggest stars. The confusingly named boy band Seventeen (there’s 13 of them) recently released an album that might have AI-generated lyrics, after one of the members revealed they had been experimenting with the technology. Some fans feel they will lose touch with the band if they use AI instead of writing their own songs. However, others point to the increasing pressure artists are under to generate content, with AI seen as an easy solution.
And finally, join us next week as our policy team Resham Kotecha, Gavin Freeguard and Matt Kilcoyne for a great discussion. The event will give attendees the chance to feed in their views on what the new government should be prioritising when it comes to policy, legislation and regulation on data and AI in its first year. The event is on Monday 15 July 11:00-12:30 BST and tickets are free. Get yours now!
Until next time…
David and the Comms team
PS: Our friends at Applied Works have launched their Springboard programme offering one organisation from anywhere in the world the chance to get free design support from their award-winning studio based in London’s Somerset House – worth £12,000. Find out more and apply.
