Risk & Compliance Implications of New UK Government

Ah, marvellous. The United Kingdom has looked upon its Department for Science, Innovation and Technology — that temple of forward-thinking acronyms — and concluded that the boldest possible innovation is abolition. Goodbye, DSIT. Hello, the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade, a name so eager to please it sounds like a minor character from a Dickens novel who works in a solicitor's office. And where does AI Minister Kanishka Narayan go? To the Cabinet Office, of course, the traditional home of ministers with impressive titles and absolutely no levers to pull.

One does love the exquisite logic. The government is reportedly worried enough about artificial intelligence to contemplate "greater AI regulation," yet it has responded by dismantling the very department that housed science and innovation oversight and shuffling its minister into a back office where his primary mechanisms of influence will be a nameplate and the faint hope that someone returns his calls. This is the regulatory equivalent of selling the fire engine and promoting the driver to Chief Fire Ambassador. The new department's name is a masterpiece of mission creep: business, innovation, science, trade — why not throw in sport, culture, heritage and a decorative plaque while they're at it?

And so the gap between what AI is actually doing and what governments can bring themselves to do about it widens by another ministerial reshuffle. The suggestion of "greater regulation" arrives with all the commitment of a man promising to start flossing tomorrow, after one more thing. Narayan will sit in the Cabinet Office, presumably generating impact assessments that land with the force of a damp paper towel on a stone floor. Meanwhile the machines get smarter, the private sector gets louder, and the UK's scientific governance continues its proud tradition of reorganising deckchairs. We're saved. Absolutely, definitively saved. Perhaps they'll announce a new department for it next week.