Lewis Goodall

Everything.

Even when he says that it could and will transform the way we deliver public services and so on.

Surely there's some truth in that.

I mean, that's the point, isn't it?

Is that AI might change everything, but it doesn't have to change anything.

Theoretically, at least, if we, as you say, live in a true democracy where...

electorates have at least some power over not just technological change but all political and economic change in their lives then there has to be some democratic input and accountability and if there's not as you say you're not really in any meaningful political democracy anymore if basically as blair seems to be suggesting we just accept that these changes are inevitable and inexorable and more than that they're not even going to be decided by us they're going to be decided by somewhere else probably in san francisco

I suppose that makes sense.

If you're thinking about creating new consciousness, religion...

Well, if you think these guys are sort of quasi-religious, I suppose the original religions might have something to say about it, right?

But what do you say to the argument that, you know, it's all very well for the Pope and for others to literally pontificate about the moral value of AI or otherwise the sort of life that we want to achieve.

But there is an argument that

which again is a sort of imperial one, but is real, but is a literal geopolitical imperial argument, which is that, look, as worried about this technology as we might be, we do know that there are all sorts of potentially dangerous uses for it.

And we know we're not developing it in isolation.

The Chinese are now a scientific and technological superpower who are very much pursuing, perhaps without the evangelism, but certainly the kind of

hard-headed appreciation of the power it might give them are clearly pursuing this technology with gusto and with enormous investment in their own way and therefore we have to keep up with them don't we

Do you think that it will become?

these companies clearly don't want AI to be contested almost politically.

But what they want and what they get is not necessarily the same thing.

Do you think that it is inevitable, partly because they're right, it could be such a set of profound changes that it can't help but infect and become a dominant theme of our politics?