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We start by thanking you all for being here
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We're going to have a really good tech week. We've already kicked off yesterday
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We've got some major announcements to make, some real partnership to do together
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And I'm just so pleased to have this opportunity, this privilege of opening this morning
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A real pleasure for me. And my constituency, the area I represent, is London
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I'm a London MP. and that means that I understand firsthand just how important it is for our sector as we go
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forward and you know whether it's entrepreneurs whether it's the spirit in London as we go
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forward this is hugely hugely important. We have to recognize that for many people
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they see AI and tech as transformative going to do so much and every time you say over five years
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or 10 years everybody says to me shorten that gear it going to be more like five years and three years that we going to bring about great change in so many aspects of our life whether that in health where I seen for myself the incredible contribution that tech and AI can make
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standing in a hospital up in the Midlands talking to consultants who deal with strokes
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and they showed me the equipment, the techniques that they are using, using AI to isolate for
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stroke victims exactly where the clot is in the brain in a microsecond of the time it would have
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taken otherwise, brilliantly saving people's lives in that particular occasion. And shortly
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Shortly after that I had an incident where I was being shown AI and stethoscopes working
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together to predict any problems someone might have. So whether it's health or other sectors, it's hugely transformative what can be done here
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Last week last Monday in fact I was standing in Scotland launching the Strategic Defence Review of the Government This was a review that I commissioned soon after we came into power to tell me what are the risks that we face as a country in this new era
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what are the challenges, what are our capabilities, and how do we make sure that as we go forward
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our capabilities match the risks and the challenges that we face as a country
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And in that, tech and AI were absolutely central because, as you will perhaps have seen over the last three years or more during this awful conflict in Ukraine, I've been back to Ukraine on a number of occasions in that three-year period to have in-depth conversations with President Zelensky to make sure that our support is in the right place
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But I was really struck the trip before last that I did this was probably about six or seven weeks ago the extent to which technology and AI was now having a direct impact in that conflict was huge In three years of conflict the way in which that war was being fought had changed profoundly And therefore what I wanted hardwired into our defence review
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was a real sense of how AI and tech would be driving our defence of the future. There are so
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many examples across government. I've set the challenge to all of my teams to show me how they
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can use AI not just in the output of government, not just in the partnership with yourselves and
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others and the delivery of services, but also in the very way that we do government. How do we
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transform what we do? And there are so many examples of that. I spoke to a social worker
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in Downing Street at one of our receptions and she explained to me with a smile on her face just
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how AI is slashing her paperwork and her caseload. And she showed and talked me through
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the way in which she's now doing her work. And what she said to me was that this was
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helping her transform the work that she did
