Matt Clifford

speaker

475 appearances 20 recordings 6 series first heard Jan 2026 last heard 21 Aug

Matt Clifford’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 20 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 8.

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The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 191. Is It Already Too Late to Control AI? (Anthropic Co-Founder, Jack Clark) · 31 May 2026 podcast

The reason I...

sort of slightly messed up my life in 2023 to get involved in this is that I really believe that it was both first order good, like it's just a good thing for the world that these things, AI Security Institute exists and can do this work.

But I also think the second order effect of building state capacity in the UK to have a lot of AI experts in government actually understanding what's happening would have a bunch of second order benefits for the UK.

Now, to your point, could...

you know, anthropic open AI, Google, you know, pay such people more to, absolutely.

But I think if you believe, as I do, and I think Jack does, that this is going to be the most important technology, you know, of our lifetimes, probably ever, then you need, I think you need to believe from a pure democratic legitimacy point of view, that it can't just be something that's done to governments.

Governments have to start to build the skills.

Well, two things I'd say.

One, it's extraordinary how quickly the amounts of money have changed.

I remember securing the first 100 million for AC or what became AC in 2023.

And it seemed like a colossal amount of money at the time.

And obviously now it's not.

But I do think, and this is...

This is slightly off topic, but I think it's worth saying.

I do think that, to me, one of the lessons is that when governments actually have a real clear mission with a degree of urgency and top-down support from the prime minister, both Rishi Sunak and followed up by Keir Starmer, actually, there are a lot of people, even people whose opportunity cost is earning huge amounts of sums in big tech firms, that are willing to take up the challenge.

So I'm not saying hiring AC has always been easy.

Obviously, they don't work there anymore.

But I definitely think the caliber of talent that you've been able to get through the mission has been very impressive.

And those that do typically don't have the capability.

Should we switch to cyber then?

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