'AI is Becoming a Key Election Battlefield'
Ahead of the Makerfield by-election, think-tank director and academic Daniel Stone tells the Byline Times Podcast that artificial intelligence is fast becoming a relevant topic for voters.
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Immigration, the cost of living and the dire state of public services have all featured in debates about the forthcoming Makerfield by-election, but pollsters are warning that another key battleground is emerging – fear of artificial intelligence.
Despite Sir Keir Starmer’s efforts to position Labour in the vanguard of AI, four out of five voters say they don’t trust the Government to control the oligarchs developing this new technology, according to research conducted by think tank Diffusion.
Daniel Stone, Diffusion’s executive director (and a Cambridge University researcher) told the Byline Times Podcast, “People are really concerned about the direction that we’re heading in. They’re not just concerned that these technologies might cause harm on their own, they’re really concerned about the deeper power dynamics behind them. They think that AI is going to cut jobs, it’s going to disproportionately benefit the wealthy, and most people have come to the view that it’s probably not being built for their benefit.”
Stone said that suspicion of AI runs deep, with people blaming it (sometimes unfairly) for a range of ills, from rising energy prices to more expensive insurance premiums, to difficulties contacting the NHS. This all feeds a sense of powerlessness and remoteness from decision makers – and with that comes growing societal mistrust. “One thing that came up a lot was people looking at Facebook or Instagram or social media, and feeling that they couldn’t tell what was real there anymore – being worried about their grandparents or their parents falling for scams.”
This sense of unease is amplified, he says, by “this second layer of AI being used to make decisions about your life; job screening, credit screening, housing screening – tools that are totally invisible to you as a person. You can apply for a credit card and are just told ‘no’, with no explanation as to why.”
Stone admits that he was taken aback by the level of awareness of AI among voters, and their sophisticated understanding of it. “You often hear in Westminster that people just don’t really get this stuff, and that as they become more familiar with it, they’ll become a little bit more relaxed. What we found is that, firstly, across the country, a lot of people are already using these tools or playing around with AI – they’re reading a lot about it, and have started to form a pretty clear view. The other thing that’s interesting is that people who are working in and around the tech industry, the people who are using these tools every day as part of their jobs, are actually some of the most concerned. I think that tells us something quite profound, which is that the more people are exposed to these tools, the more worried about them they become.”
Diffusion polled more than 2,900 people across the UK, and found that 77% of respondents were concerned about deepfakes; 74% were worried that AI might cause unemployment; and 58% had fears about children’s safety. Stone’s research suggests that Reform UK stands to benefits most from these anxieties; disaffected Labour voters who mistrust the Government over AI are more likely to switch to Reform, whereas other Labour defectors are more likely to turn Green.
Stone says, “The people moving in both directions really want something to be done. They have similar concerns, similar motivations, similar disappointments with the current Government. The only thing that really shapes them as different is that [Green supporters] still believe that Government can deliver, and [Reform supporters] don’t.
“What we found is that across the board, people really wanted to make sure that the UK wasn’t dependent on the United States. They want to make sure that the country is able to stand on its own two feet and make decisions for its own benefit over the long term. That’s actually one of the areas where they’re most critical of the current Government – around being overly deferential – and that’s why they’re not sure whether the Government is capable of ensuring that AI delivers for normal Britons, because they’re just going with whatever these US tech titans give the UK. How does that feed into the Reform reaction? They basically want a leader who’s going to say, ‘no more, none of this. We’re going to go and do this our own way, and we’re going to make our own choices about this,’ and do it in a very demonstrative, performative, and declarative way.”
Reform voters hoping for what Stone describes as “almost Trumpian type confrontations,” and “wrestling-style theatre” against the tech bros are, however, likely to be disappointed. Nigel Farage has previously courted Elon Musk; he embraces cryptocurrencies favoured by the likes of Open AI boss Sam Altman; and previously boasted of his close links to Donald Trump, a President who, until recently, resisted attempts to regulate artificial intelligence. Trump finally signed an executive order last week, calling on tech firms to share new AI models with the US Government 30 days before release, in the interests of national security, but following pressure from the likes of Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, the new framework remains voluntary.
Labour, meanwhile, is caught in a familiar bind; it wants to be seen as pro-growth and assume a place at the forefront of the AI revolution, whilst at the same time appearing tough against the tech bros who have Trump’s ear. Rather than legislate immediately against the online sharing of nude pictures by children, for example, it has given Apple and Google a three month deadline to come up with a plan to implement image blocking technology. Plans for a complete ban on social media apps by under-16s have been delayed and look like being significantly watered down. This runs counter to Stone’s research which showed that 78% of respondents favour tougher regulation of AI overall.
It’s impossible to say precisely how much any of this will influence the final outcome in Makerfield – a by-election which could see Andy Burnham return to Westminster and ultimately become Prime Minister – but it’s clear that AI is an issue which voters do care deeply about and which could swing crucial votes in what is already a tight race.
One issue which might swing floating voters is data sharing with US-based tech companies such as Palantir. Stone reports that although voters are roughly split down the middle on this issue, “the people who really don’t trust these private companies to be working on NHS data, feel it very, very strongly – and they’re also the people who are leaving Labour. They voted Labour last time and wouldn’t do so again. There is a real desire to think about how can we improve the NHS with AI, because people are open to that. The question is more about how do we ensure that the companies we’re working with to do that are consistent with UK values; and where the benefits are anchored in the UK, rather than ending up shipping money off overseas.”
Listen to Adrian Goldberg’s interview with Daniel Stone on the Byline Podcast