Treasury calls in Blair thinktank to advise on using AI across public services

. UK edition

Tony Blair
The director of AI at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change has been asked to advise the government on deploying AI across the public sector. Photograph: Mark Schiefelbein/AP

Tech equity campaigners compare move to ‘inviting in foxes to consult on the future of the henhouse’

Ministers have called in Tony Blair’s thinktank and private tech companies to guide them on deploying AI across the UK government in a move campaigners compared to “inviting in foxes to consult on the future of the henhouse”.

James Murray, chief secretary to the Treasury, chaired a meeting on Wednesday with the director of AI at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI), the chair of IBM and senior executives at AI companies including Faculty AI, now part of Accenture, and Dex Hunter-Torricke, a former communications adviser at Google, Facebook and Elon Musk’s Space X.

“These people are exactly who can help us create change across the public sector – giving us the hard truths on our approach to AI and advising where we need to prioritise our investment to support real efficiencies,” said Murray, who said their advice will “feed into efficiency processes ahead of the next spending review”.

The move came after the technology secretary, Liz Kendall, last month said the government’s goal was to “make Britain the fastest AI adoption country in the G7”. The Treasury said it showed it was committing “to private sector engagement on the deployment of artificial intelligence across the public sector so it can improve efficiency and productivity”.

But Foxglove, the tech equity campaign group, said the Treasury meeting was “yet more evidence of the government’s excessively cosy relationship with Big Tech”.

“Giving tech giants privileged access to decision-making around buying the very products they supply is clearly a risk,” said Donald Campbell, director of advocacy. “It’s hard to understand how ministers seem to be unable to spot a potential conflict of interest which is blindingly obvious to everyone else.”

Ministers were expected to hear criticism of the way the government has procured AI and related technology, the absence of the highest calibre talent in Whitehall to steer the implementation of AI and its failure to turn pilots into large scale projects.

The government has signed memorandums of understanding with AI firms OpenAI, Anthropic, and GoogleDeepMind, accepted $1m (£730,000) from Meta to fund experts to “develop cutting-edge AI solutions … support national security and defence teams” and has contracts in health, defence and policing with Palantir.

This week the deputy prime minister, David Lammy, announced at a Microsoft event in London, plans to “dramatically expand the use of AI throughout the court system”.

Laura Gilbert, a former senior Downing Street AI and data science adviser who now leads on AI for TBI, was due to be among the speakers on Wednesday. TBI has been funded with more than £250m given and pledged by the Ellison Foundation, an organisation in the name of the Oracle founder Larry Ellison.