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AI Haven't A Clue

What Does AI Do When Nobody’s Watching? & We TEST The UK Govs Chatbot

22 May 2026

Transcription

Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?

0.537 - 11.3 George Butler

Coming up on AI having to clue. You are libeling me. Right there. Lawyer up Chandler. Is the UK taking to AI? So it just makes stuff up?

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11.32 - 14.927 James Chandler

Precisely. I do like a bit of gov.uk.

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15.168 - 17.753 George Butler

What does AI do when nobody is watching?

0

18.02 - 25.915 James Chandler

And AI is getting heavy. Can I marry my cousin in the UK? Can you? He doesn't give you an answer for that.

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26.115 - 34.524 George Butler

Anything that Mark the Zuckerberg wears will never be classed as sexy. Hello, welcome.

Chapter 2: What does AI do when nobody is watching?

34.704 - 49.918 George Butler

This is AI Haven't a Clue brought to you with KPMG, the podcast where we unpack the wild world of AI. And I guess my role in this show is AI novice, a.k.a. village idiot, George Butler.

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50.258 - 56.324 James Chandler

And bringing the mental acuity to the next hour or so, me, AI enthusiast, James Chandler.

0

56.344 - 67.097 George Butler

Mental acuity? What is that? Oh, don't you know? Did you get that from ChatGPT? Did you ask it to make you sound more clever? What does it mean?

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67.839 - 69.141 James Chandler

It's sort of brain power, isn't it?

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69.161 - 73.93 George Butler

You don't know what it means, do you? Oh, outrageous. Outrageous.

74.451 - 74.671 James Chandler

Right.

74.731 - 76.274 George Butler

How are you doing, Mr. Chandler?

76.494 - 81.844 James Chandler

Yeah, I'm all right. I love the Christine interview. You know, I got some good feedback on that as well.

81.824 - 99.92 George Butler

Yeah, Christine Armstrong, if you missed it, we put that out on Monday. A fascinating interview. And I tell you what, the one thing I love about this show is we're not always effusive about AI. We are exploring that topic. Sometimes you are positive. Sometimes we are realist. Realistic about the topic.

Chapter 3: How is the UK government utilizing chatbots?

401.443 - 411.921 George Butler

No, neither is it Rick Astley. Oh, yeah. You'll have to keep listening to find out what 80s icon I'm talking about. That is called a throw ahead in the business.

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412.122 - 413.704 Unknown

I see what you've done.

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413.724 - 428.608 George Butler

Before we get there, before we get to the news, your big thing last week, it was a really lovely example of how not all young people are going crazy for AI. This was a college graduation ceremony in America, wasn't it?

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428.588 - 448.276 James Chandler

In Florida. Yeah, that's right. And we've seen some more things. So actually, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was at the University of Arizona. Again, graduation speech. They always get someone in. They do the bit about leaders. They do the bit about technology. He was comparing the rise of AI to other technological shifts that we've seen.

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448.696 - 472.112 James Chandler

Computer revolution, mobile, e-com, all that sort of stuff. Exactly the same happened. There is this real backlash where people are being very vocal with incredible figures like Eric Schmidt about how they feel about AI. So it is not a slam dunk that young people are all kind of happy, clappy and all embracing about this stuff. They see it as a real threat and they're letting people know.

472.193 - 496.783 George Butler

The booze around AI leads us very nicely on to two quite significant research studies about the UK's feelings on AI released this week. And these two studies, well, they're kind of a tale of two halves, if you like, because firstly, James, the UK is using AI more than ever before.

496.763 - 518.347 James Chandler

Yeah, this is data from Ofcom. They track all the usage around the internet of everyone in the UK. Better digital literacy is being linked to, which I think is a really, really positive thing. People who understood AI, they're saying, tended to form better when they're spotting things like scams or fake profiles or just content that's misleading.

518.767 - 537.889 James Chandler

Deepfakes and that kind of AI-generated stuff, misinformation, fake news... That is increasing this distrust people have in online, which I guess is kind of which I guess is no surprise, but people are getting a bit more savvy about spotting it. Other highlights within their algorithmic recommendations.

538.109 - 554.75 James Chandler

That's effectively how your Spotify feed is working or how Amazon suggests things to you or how you get ads on some of these social platforms. Those things and AI really have reshaped how people are using the Internet online. And we know this, you know this from your own usage, all the people that we talk to.

Chapter 4: What are the statistics on AI adoption in the UK?

2217.625 - 2235.823 James Chandler

Big thing this week, I was sort of inspired by the panel that you did a couple of weeks ago that you came back from, the panel all around kind of sustainability. Yeah, on the environment. I was thinking about that and I saw this article which is all around this place in Georgia where the residents had got very, very cross.

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2236.244 - 2258.108 James Chandler

A nearby data centre had used 30 million gallons of water and the only way that they'd noticed it was their water pressure had got a lot lower. And, you know, they're up in arms about it. And it throws up this whole debate around, oh, my God, how much water are these data centers using? And I was reading a couple of takes on this. There's a guy on the TikToks called Kyle Balmer.

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2258.148 - 2277.469 James Chandler

He's kind of one of these AI creator educator types, a bit like sort of a Will Francis. He had a really interesting take on this, which is that. Water is a little bit of a red herring when it comes to AI, and AI can be a bit of a bogeyman. This 29 million gallons of water that the data center was using, it is a lot of water.

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2277.909 - 2302.448 James Chandler

But as humans, we struggle a little bit when numbers get to that sort of size. We can't sort of compare it to anything. 29 million gallons of water is the same amount of water it would take to make 40,000 burgers in the U.S., In the US, 50 billion burgers are made every single year. That's 137 million burgers per day.

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2302.468 - 2316.313 James Chandler

So the 40,000 burgers that you could make with this water is actually quite small. 0.03% of the burgers made in the US every single day will be the equivalent to the amount of water that was used in this data center. And...

2316.293 - 2338.395 James Chandler

Just imagine, and this is what kind of Kyle gets into, just imagine if the same amount of scrutiny that perhaps we're putting on AI was to be put on the beef industry, was to be put on things like fast fashion, almonds, for example. You know, to do one almond, you need gallons and gallons of water. So this sort of hyper fixation on AI is... is a kind of an interesting thing that's going on.

2338.415 - 2353.509 James Chandler

There's lots of other industries not doing so well. And for me, it just got me thinking about some sort of questions or posing some questions to it. I wonder, one, should we be giving it the level of scrutiny and why on earth are other industries not getting the level of security?

2353.709 - 2366.28 James Chandler

But the second thing is actually, because we're starting to hear about data centres in the UK, we've got these UK AI growth zones. There's Scotland, I think there's North Wales, there's some around London.

2366.26 - 2391.354 James Chandler

if the impact on water is going to be so great that residents for example in north wales start to lose water pressure bills start to go up you know who's gonna you know surely be ai company or whoever's using it should should sort of put more back into that local infrastructure um We talked about a story a couple of weeks ago whereby the kind of the warnings are already there.

Chapter 5: How are AI technologies affecting job security?

2498.658 - 2509.127 George Butler

We covered the fact that one of the stars of Marvel were really angry with Disney laying off a load of roles. Interesting question. Controversial question. James, over to you.

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2510.018 - 2530.002 James Chandler

It is a really, really good question. And I actually, there's sort of two sides to it in my mind. One is, I think what people say and what they do are quite different. So I think most people would say they care about human endeavour, human agency, creativity, all that sort of stuff. The way they behave, I think, is a lot more brutal.

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2530.042 - 2544.355 James Chandler

So, for example, when self-checkouts came in or you go to a McDonald's and you have to use a screen or you go to your bank and you talk to a cashier, people are up in arms about it, but they still continue to use them because it's quicker, gets you through.

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2544.395 - 2562.274 James Chandler

Similarly, people still to this day get very worried about what Amazon might be doing to your local high street bookshop that's sort of been around the corner and is always there and employs lots of people. Those same people are still ordering next day delivery. And I think AI is going to follow the same pattern.

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2562.294 - 2585.632 James Chandler

There is going to be outrage, but I think for people's behavior to change completely is going to be very, very different. So I think if Disney can make films faster and cheaper with AI, I think most people who have a Disney Plus subscription won't cancel just because... a team that is responsible for the sort of one part of that film's human effects gets replaced by AI or machines.

2586.173 - 2603.901 James Chandler

And I think especially in a world and an economic climate right now where we've probably all got one too many subscriptions and those subscription prices are going up. I don't think people are kind of throwing those in the bin. I do think, though, if this was like a banking company, it might be different. But it's not. It's Disney.

2604.321 - 2627.083 James Chandler

And I don't think people associate things like speed and efficiency with Disney. You know, these are people that are selling dreams. They're selling imagination, human storytelling, physical experiences like their parks, stuff like that. So I think people could cope with a insurance brand making, you know, finding your next home insurance deal.

2627.063 - 2647.771 James Chandler

cheaper with ai i think people can can do that but this sort of magic that goes with disney around creating films that kind of need humans to understand it i think could become a little bit problematic reputationally for disney if they don't get it right i do think there is a really uncomfortable truth here which is like people People want cheaper subscriptions.

2648.011 - 2669.48 James Chandler

They want more brilliant content and they want it endlessly, but they don't want a human cost to it. And somewhere in that sort of triangle, one thing always kind of has to give. So I think what we've seen, you remember that DeepSeek article that we looked at? It was one of the Chinese AIs where they'd done the Brad Pitt fight thing. I mean, it looked incredible.

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