Up next in 10
The boss of Google’s UK and European operations has issued a 'call to arms' over a worrying gap in the UK’s adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) that could leave Britain at risk of missing out on a £200 billion boost to the economy.
New research from the tech giant suggests that two-thirds of workers (66%) in Britain have never used generative AI in their jobs, with usage particularly low among women over 55 and those from lower socio-economic backgrounds.
The firm said that while AI has the potential to add £400 billion to Britain’s economy by the end of the decade through enhanced productivity, only half of this will be realised if the UK does not plug the adoption gap.
While it's still uncertain whether AI can do what needs to be done for our economy, Professor Daniel Susskind, an economist at King's College London and Cambridge University, thinks he knows how to help.
As the debate on how to create growth continues, he joins LBC's Ali Miraj to discuss.
Listen to the full show on Global Player: https://app.af.globalplayer.com/Br0x/LBCYouTubeListenLive
#alimiraj #economics #growth #politics #ukpolitics #ukeconomy #uk #technology #LBC
LBC is the home of live debate around news and current affairs in the UK.
Join in the conversation and listen at https://www.lbc.co.uk/
Sign up to LBC’s weekly newsletter here: https://l-bc.co/signup
Show More Show Less View Video Transcript
0:00
Now, Dr. Daniel Suskin, he's a professor, research professor at King's College London
0:04
senior research associate at the Institute for Ethics in AI at Oxford University. He's also at
0:10
the Stanford Digital Economy Lab. His book here, Growth, a Reckoning, was chosen by President Obama
0:19
as one of his favourite books of 2024. Now, I've read this and I can understand exactly why
0:25
Daniel it's elegantly written it masterfully argues your point and does so in an absolutely
0:31
accessible manner I'm going to stop the sycophancy now great to have you here
0:36
it's a really important topic my question to the audience is how do we get Britain growing again
0:42
0345 6060 973 text 84850 ask Alexa to send a comment to LBC
0:49
this is a chance for us to explore when we have really difficult issues
0:54
that no one else can solve, a bit like the A-Team, we deploy the LBC think tank, which is all of you
0:59
engaging in a deep public conversation with me and Daniel here today
1:05
on this vexed question of growth. And before we get going, just remember one of our former prime ministers
1:11
who was outlived by a lettuce, yes, Liz Truss, who delivered a speech in Birmingham that was heckled by protesters
1:17
when she said this. To dismiss anyone challenging the status quo, It's always more taxes, more regulation and more meddling
1:28
Wrong, wrong, wrong. I have three priorities for our economy. Growth, growth and growth
1:40
Well, that was Liz Truss. How do we get Britain growing again? 0345 6060 973
1:46
Daniel, wonderful to have you here. Great to be here. Thank you so much. What is growth
1:50
it's one of our most important but also most dangerous ideas um i mean from an economic point
2:00
of view it's essentially the value of all the goods and services that are traded in a market
2:06
um that's the sort of technical view of it but the reason it's so important is that it's
2:13
associated with almost every measure of human flourishing and if you look at britain today
2:18
public services backlogged and broken, worklessness rising, average real wages haven't really risen for 16 years
2:27
Each of those things, growth is probably our best response to. But if only the problem were as simple as that, because growth is also associated with many of the greatest challenges that we face
2:41
And most famously, it's associated with the environment that we're growing towards a sort of ecological catastrophe
2:47
But the argument in the book that I make is that well that not right It the price of growth is even greater It associated also with growing inequalities in society with encouraging us to chase after technologies like AI
3:01
that are disrupting work and politics. It's leading to growth through globalization in particular
3:07
has led to the sort of destruction of particular places and local communities
3:11
And so we face this dilemma, this tension, that growth on the one hand is associated
3:17
with all these extraordinary things. But on the other hand, it's also associated with all these great challenges as well
3:23
You make the point in the book that the concept of economic growth is actually fairly modern
3:28
For millennia, it wasn't really a thing. And then the last 200 years, it really became a feature
3:34
Yeah, so that's right. So growth for 300,000 years, there's essentially no growth
3:38
So whether you're a sort of hunter-gatherer in the, you know, hundreds of thousands of years ago
3:43
or a labourer working away at the start of the Industrial Revolution
3:47
Although your lives would have differed in lots of different ways, from an economic point of view, it would have been roughly the same
3:52
You're likely to have lived a pretty stagnant life. That changes exactly, as you say, about 200, 250 years ago
4:00
But what's really interesting is that the idea that we ought to pursue growth, that it's something that ought to be a political priority
4:06
And, you know, today growth sits at the center of our political lives. And, you know, you have this sense that, well, surely at some point in the past, a team of smart people sat down in central government somewhere and said, look, we ought to pursue growth
4:19
And actually, that's not what happens. Before the 1950s, almost nobody is talking about the idea of economic growth
4:26
And even if people had decided they wanted to pursue economic growth, it actually wouldn't have been possible
4:32
The only reliable measure of how big the economy is is only invented in the sort of early 1940s
4:37
So it's this incredibly recent phenomenon, despite the fact it seems to us today to be so incredibly important
4:46
You had served in the prime minister strategy unit previously. So you've been on the policy side as well
4:51
How much of a challenge and a fixation is growth for policymakers
4:57
Because no one can seem to find this elusive packet of growth down the back of the sofa
5:02
Everyone's been trying to find it. but we've been flatlining essentially since 2008, since the recession, right
5:09
We were growing at, what, 2% before that? It's been paltry since then. What has gone wrong here
5:13
I think that's right. One response is, well, look, we need to have a lot of humility
5:17
about the idea of growth. We desperately want it, but exactly as you say
5:21
it's actually one of the great mysteries. Although politicians, policymakers talk really confidently about it
5:27
it remains one of the great mysteries of economic thought. Lots of people in my profession
5:31
have spent their entire careers trying to understand it. And, you know, exactly as you say
5:36
there's no magic lever out there that we can pull that will get growth. That said I do think there is one thing that we can kind of draw out of this fog of uncertainty And it the sort of one of the arguments that really runs through the book And it that growth does not come the sort of growth that we want
5:55
It doesn't come from doing big, impressive things in the material world
6:00
building more houses, building wider roads, building faster trains. I know that's the sort of, that's the way in which many people think about growth today
6:11
But I think one of the most important and, yes, controversial arguments of the book is that that's not where growth comes from
6:17
You call them capital fundamentalists. Yeah. People who want to. Why? Because it's this idea and that we ought to invest in impressive things that we can see in the world and touch with our touch with our hands
6:33
And some people are quite fundamentalist about it, less in the sort of in a kind of developed country like Britain, although the way in which people talk about infrastructure investment and things like that today does resemble that
6:48
But if you look at the way in which many international organizations and policymakers thought about the route to prosperity in developing countries, it was often exactly the same
6:58
So my argument is that growth doesn't come from doing these big, impressive things. It's not going to harm growth, but if you really want to drive not just growth in the sense that the economy gets bigger, but growth in per capita income, the actual average wages that people get, it's going to come instead from a sort of what I call this intangible world of ideas
7:22
It comes, in short, from technological progress, from discovering ever more creative, inventive, ingenious ways
7:30
of using the sort of finite resources that we have. And you're saying that ideas are basically free
7:36
and there's no limit on ideas, effectively. Yeah, and I think it's an important..
7:43
One of the ways I get to that observation is that there is an argument
7:47
that you hear quite often from the environmental movement. And there's a sort of slogan that infinite growth is not possible on a finite planet
7:56
The idea that the environment creates some sort of constraint on our ability to grow
8:02
And it's true that our environment, in the sense of the amount of land
8:07
our finite planet, the amount of land that we have, the amount of resources that we have, those things are finite
8:14
Yeah. But growth doesn't come from using more and more resources. Growth comes from discovering ever more productive ways of using those resources
8:26
It comes from ideas about how we can do ever more inventive, creative. I get your point. I get your point, Daniel. But let me challenge you a little
8:33
Yes please So you said you call them capital fundamentalists These people who want to invest in very gargantuan state projects that look great like Boris Island or whatever A challenge there Look one is that people could say that investing in infrastructure
8:49
be it motorways, be it railways, be it whatever, is an enabler of growth. Because if you can get
8:55
people to connect quicker and to travel faster and to do what they need to do, that is itself
9:00
an enabler of prosperity and growth. And to the other point you make in the book
9:03
You talk a lot about AI and you're writing a new book on AI as well
9:08
To drive AI, and I had a data center expert on the program not too long ago, you need to build data centers
9:14
That is infrastructure. That is capital fundamentalism. You need to build bricks and mortar data centers with servers in there to drive the AI revolution that you want
9:23
Yeah. And I'm not going to fall into the trap of being a fundamentalist myself about this, right
9:27
I recognize that. And I do think there are some sorts of very particular infrastructure investments which do lead
9:34
But the reason they lead to growth isn't because of the fact that they are big, impressive things in the material world
9:41
It's because they're related to generating technological progress. Another way to think about this is to compare what's happened in the UK with what's happened in the US over the last 15 years
9:53
And it's really, really striking. I think one of the observations that I make time and time again is I don't think people in Britain realise how poor we have become relative to the US over the last decade and a half
10:08
If you take Britain, take London out, the average wage in Britain minus London is less than the poorest state in the United States, Mississippi
10:19
Wow. And the story of what's happened and that just what you know, that sort of story just wasn't true 15, 20 years ago
10:27
And the story of what's happened to Britain over the last and it's not just Britain, it's also Europe, too, over the last 15 years relative to the US, where the US has continued to grow in Europe and the UK has become stagnant is, you know, really striking
10:40
Again, you know, we haven't had any improvement in average real wages since the financial crisis
10:46
And the idea that the reason for that is because America builds more reservoirs or builds more roads or builds more trees
10:55
It's just it's that's not their infrastructure is pretty poor. Actually, it's a common complaint
11:00
And, you know, one of the really interesting things of the last year or two was there's a sort of bit of soul searching done by the Europeans
11:06
and it was published by, it was called the Draghi Report, written by a great economist
11:12
Mario Draghi. Mario Draghi, exactly. And looking for the sort of, you know
11:16
what explains why the US has done so well and why the UK and Europe have done it
11:21
And in short, the answer is the US technology sector. It just has this kind of engine of creativity and innovation
11:28
and technological progress that just doesn't exist in Britain and the US and the EU in the same way
#News
#Politics
#Economy News