The UK AI Revolution | Part 3: The Future of UK AI | Documentary 2025

There was no single moment of arrival. But AI is here. It's in our homes, our work, our decisions. The question now isn't whether it changes everything. It's whether we choose to shape that change. We have an enormous [music] responsibility with AI to shape the future for generations to come. >> The AI [music] services, they're they're here, they're with us day by day. You can create productivity by increasing efficiency. >> It's about encouraging that positive mindset. So, it's a conscious decision of people. >> But with that growth comes a footprint in energy and in resources. The challenge is now how do we make progress sustainable? >> Both the challenge and the [music] opportunity of of AI is that you've got a phenomenal amount of compute generating a phenomenal amount of heat. And if we look at organizations that have already stated their climate targets and environmental targets say 5 years ago, those organizations probably need to look at their adoption of AI at the same time as they look at the impact that that adoption is going to have on their climate targets. If we were more joined up and we said, actually, we're going to take a data center, we're going to put it at the hub of a housing estate, we could address fuel poverty in areas tomorrow morning. Not only is it environmentally the right thing to do, but economically it isn't [music] a challenge that we need to spend more money on. It will save us money. Behind every data center, every line of code, there is a deeper choice. Will we build an AI future that works for the few or for the many? >> There is a giant silver lining if we're willing to grasp it. We have the technologies, we have the people, and we have the capability. So, it's as simple as we need to make it easy to make those decisions to support local businesses to grow and thrive. I'm hopeful that we will come up with strong messages and strong recommendations for government [music] and industry, create a community of entrepreneurs, of AI builders that understand the requirements of real people and build AI for good. Understanding AI and putting it to good use becomes the key. >> AI brings power but also possibility. The real cost of intelligence will depend [music] on what we do next. >> [music] [music] >> as I conclude my journey across the UK. Okay, I remind myself how the AI revolution runs on energy, vast amounts of it. And as artificial intelligence grows smarter, its environmental costs grow [music] too. How will that impact society? How will that benefit um the poorest in society, those that live at the margins of society? That sort of whole thought process has has been missing. you know the energy and water use that is being proposed is not kind of sustainable just on the most basic level it's not even available as we are all using personally the services that we're worrying about the cloud services the AI services they're they're here they're with us day by day you might just go onto an online search engine and ask a question and you might put that same question into an LLM and the difference between energy use might be 30 times less online than the LLM and the LLM might not give you a much better answer. We need to be all thinking about that kind of things. We shouldn't just be leaving it to the government or to committees to work it out for us. I think we've all got a responsibility to help. Generative AI is really computer intensive. When you look at the way the AI model works, [music] there are billions and billions of they're called floatingoint operations. It's a multiplication, right? There are billions and millions of multiplications that happen between numbers. That's just the way the network has been created and that's the way it works. So even asking chat GPT a simple prompt and getting an answer back to get that answer back there's been of the order of billions of these multiplications that have happened in a server in a data center somewhere in the world and if you think of the um millions of people at [music] the same time typing a prompt into chat GPC gives you some kind of idea of how much compute is going on. net effect is that that's going to increase the amount of data centers that are going to be in the world. As AI capability accelerates, sustainability initiatives are struggling to keep pace, but it doesn't have to be a trade-off. Both the challenge and the opportunity of of AI is that you've got a phenomenal amount of compute generating a phenomenal amount of heat. So you've got one massive challenge in the tech sector. On the other hand, in another part of government, literally down the corridor, you have another government department who are desperately searching for ways to make heat pump technology economically viable. So when you reuse heat from data centers, it just makes you richer. It's cheaper. It's not only is it environmentally the right thing to do, but economically it makes us more money. And consequently, we can pass that saving on to our customers. So when government is looking at this problem, this isn't a challenge that we need to spend more money on. It will save us money. We are so stupidly disjointed in the way that we plan things. So we design a data center location and then we look at building it and then a year later we say we're going to put a new housing estate. And by the time you've done that, the cost to retrofit and build the district heating system is so monumentally high that the media would get hold of it and say, "That's ridiculous. It's such a waste of money." But if we were more joined up and we said, "Actually, we're going to take a data center. We're going to put it at the hub of a housing estate." And from day one, it's going to be built into the ground. So all the connections are there. So [music] we literally would have it all embedded at a cost-ffective price delivering free heat literally to the to all the people in the area. We we could address fuel poverty in areas tomorrow morning if we actually wanted to. And the problem with that is the wanting to bit is large enterprises who are the generators of all the workloads need to be willing to take a bag of cash they're currently giving to Microsoft or Amazon being willing to take that bag of cash and saying it's something I'm already going to spend instead of spending it there I'm going to put it over there and if I put it over there I'm going to be giving the money to a UK based company with UK based people supporting the UK community so helping to end fuel poverty helping to deliver revenues back into the UK tax system and helping to deliver you know jobs back to impoverished areas. So many easy decisions if we can operate in a joined up way. >> This isn't just a technical challenge. It's a human one. It's about who benefits and how we move forward responsibly. [music] The historical precedent with technology has obviously been creative destruction. It's upended old industries, created new jobs in the process, and there's no doubt that a lot of that will happen. the risks are that disruption will be much much larger and then the ability to transition into other jobs much harder as well. >> So what we're not thinking about is the the impact on wider society. So what's going to happen when the you know the half a million jobs disappear? Where are they going to go and work? They're certainly not all going to be in AI roles. [music] >> I'm slightly nervous that I could get replaced, right? So So my my role is about strategic thinking and and looking at the future and for me context is everything. The little bit of hope that I have got is at the moment I think AI struggle with context, right? They're very good at putting bits of pieces of data together, but they're not good with applying that to a specific context. At least not I've not seen that yet. So for me, maybe I've got a little bit further, but for the the the folks who are doing [music] repetitive task stuff, that's ripe for automation. And that's that's where I think the sweet spot of of of kind of AI is right now. If you are surpassing all of cognitive knowledge, maybe all that sort of separates us in the labor market in the near future is the dexterity of the human hand. But also looking at the breakthroughs that AI is leading to in robotics, I don't think the dexterity of the human hand will give us an advantage for much much longer. So I think we need to be very honest that there is going to be extreme disruption. >> Sadly, [music] these aren't just predictions. They echo what happened in the wake of past technological disruption. >> We've seen other forms of disruption in recent years including through the process of globalization which hollowed out advanced manufacturing in many developed nations and you know you saw a lot of political upheaval because of people losing their jobs which were well-paying you know jobs in factories which gave them some meaning and status. You know, there was an article in the Times of someone from Gen Z saying, "Well, I don't see any point in working hard because AI is going to take my job." And I think that is, you know, it's a very very disillusioning prospect for young people to be thinking about if they think, you know, the next 10, 20 years they don't have any meaningful prospect of building a life in the way that previous generations did. How we adopt and take that technology to be beneficial to you know progress, human progress, public service progress, productivity with across all our lives becomes the important [music] question mark and how we embrace that becomes the important question because everybody [music] is going to have some access. I think the research angle is maybe the area where if we're researching certain things [music] whether it's dementia, cancer or whatever it might be the health of the of of the human and the population and on the horizon you know there's this optimism that AI can help us find the answer for that and maybe help us find it quicker than we would do as we traditionally have been you know trying to find these these these cures. I think that's where the mindset can really start to shift. That said, there needs to be a win. So AI does need to prove itself. [laughter] And you know, I think there's there's elements of it in COVID [music] that it did. And um wouldn't it be great coming out of the UK that the cure for dementia was was was, you know, the breakthrough happened. there was already a drug available on the market and hey presto results proved that the onset of dementia could be delayed or whatever through through something we already had but it was AI that helped us [music] discover that. I think we need we need several of those wins and I then I think people will then start to think about this [music] longer term and be more engaged and more positive. The fear isn't and shouldn't be about the technology itself. It's about what we risk losing if we don't guide its direction. >> AI will not take your job, but someone who understands AI better than you might. And if you really think about that in context of doesn't matter what work you have, what you do for a living, if you are not thinking about this tool that everybody has access to and how that makes you more efficient or provides a differentiated service to the customers that that you're looking at looking after, but there will always be this human aspect to that. So if you're a lawyer, rather than going through how you've traditionally analyzed a huge amount of text and that's done for you, still how you go and implement that becomes really really important. If you take the majority of workers who who feel that AI is going to remove or change their jobs completely, even take away their jobs, then there has to be a mechanism in place for them to learn that okay, it may help them in certain ways and augment [music] some of their jobs. Ideally, it can be used in a way to educate them that they're all alternative or enhanced areas of the job that they could they you know [music] they can move into. It's about encouraging that positive mindset to or the growth mindset call it that in order for everyone to feel okay I do want to learn more. So it's a conscious decision of people and if people don't want to make that choice [music] people will naturally get left behind. >> The pressure to adapt [music] and keep up lands unevenly. But with the right choices and the right education that burden can become a shared opportunity. My personal efficiency as a human being existing in [music] today is time. Can I get time back? And then I invest that time in my family and my dogs and I go and have a good time. Right? So for me being efficient means I can use my time currency to go and do something else. To me, you know, taking [music] advantage of efficiencies will create a lot of opportunities for increasing productivity and humans can actually go and do other things that are far more strategic than repetitive tasks. And you can create productivity by increasing efficiency. And if you think about it that way, you can absolutely take [music] advantage of AI far faster than others. But do not underestimate how [music] you need to change your organization's innovation culture and how you think about technology because [music] you could be stuck with the past and you still those negative connotations will rise to the [music] top. But if you think about how the future changes and productivity is actually positive for humans, then efficiency will be gained very quickly. Understanding AI and putting it to good use becomes the key. Uh [music] and that for me is the opportunity for everyone regardless of if you sit in a big private organization or a public sector [music] entity. If you sit as a citizen at home as a student or you sit as a CEO of of a of a large organization and actually if you sit in the UK or if you [music] sit in you know a classic third world country you are going to have access. [music] What you do with that I think is what counts. >> Access alone [music] isn't equity. True impact depends on who controls the tools and who has a say in how they're used. People talk about [music] democratizing AI. Quite simply, that means making artificial intelligence [music] available to to as many people as possible. Um that that's not going to happen on its own. It simply won't. And I think [music] the reason it simply won't is the organizations that control the technology and the organizations that control the supply chain are the ones that are going to in effect set the [music] market and set prices. The highest bidder usually wins, right? So I think there there is a gold rush in the corporate sector to [music] get on the right part of the supply chain to dominate a certain layer of the model stack whether it's at the hardware level, the network level, the model infrastructure [music] level or even the application level. So I think organizations are jockeying to kind of grab a part of the the the sector of those verticals in the best way that they can to to benefit [music] themselves. I think more needs to be done to look at how AI benefits [music] people in their everyday lives. And and AI doesn't just bring around benefits just on [music] its own. It has to has to be crafted and created and pushed by organizations. Worst case scenario is that AI is owned by a few companies based [music] in a foreign country that has very different values [music] from everyone else. And um the AI gets to control what we believe, what we say without us having a way to stop it from doing so. With so much at stake, the question will become, will we act with foresight or let the [music] future be shaped for us? We have an enormous responsibility with AI to shape the future for generations to come. Did we miss the opportunity to be a more prosperous nation because we were too cautious or we didn't [music] invest or we didn't understand or we didn't embrace? At the same time, [music] did we make big mistakes along the way in being so focused on trying to [music] build the future and we create a world and a society that becomes more dangerous. So we have a big responsibility to get this right. One of the things that keeps me awake at night, if you think about potentially nefarious states or nefarious actors that want to launch propaganda for political aims or to instigate uh wars or to terrorize. This is now actually quite straightforward to [music] do. You don't need to be a PhD in AI and have a a research team building this kind of stuff. it can just be created and sadly unfortunately with the tools that we have today without having to be a programmer. So I I think I think that's a a really really scary effect. So, how can we trust the information that's being delivered through generative AI, whether that's a deep fake picture or a fake news article or whatever or piece of political propaganda? How can we verify the veracity, the truthfulness of that? I think that that is something that we're going to have to face head on uh because it's so easy to to hijack this technology. I'm hopeful that we will come up with strong messages and strong recommendations for government and industry, but also solutions that they can deploy outright and at the same time create a community of entrepreneurs, of AI builders that understand the the requirements of real people and build AI for good, not just AI. by doing just a lot of money. >> I think you've got these massive forces of change that are operating around the world which has kind of shaken the European political class to say that you know we have to operate differently in the coming years. Now I think Europe still has some of the benefits of the of the block and the market to create some of that scale which has obviously helped benefit the US and China. The UK does not have that. So it has to think about its relationship with EU and its alliances quite clearly. But I think over the coming years we will see some big companies I think coming out of Europe and particularly in the deep tech space um where you know we've got some very good advanced manufacturing, clean energy, biotech coming out that will actually be really big superstar companies in the modern world. I think >> I'm fairly well known for being the [music] biggest pessimist in the world ever. And if I was to take one thing to say away, I'd say there is a giant silver lining if we're willing to grasp it. And that's it. We just need to be willing to grasp it because we have we have the technologies, we have the people, and we have the capability if we're willing to spend money with those people and those technologies. So, it's as simple as we need to make it easy to make those decisions to support local businesses to grow and thrive because if we did that, we would be gigantically stable as an economy and we'd still be supporting a lot of the overseas tech just in a very different way. The future of AI won't [music] be written by algorithms alone, but by the values we embed, the accountability we insist on, and the imagination we bring. If you think about the UK economy and you [music] think about the British Isles as an example, there is opportunity everywhere for us all to be lifted up and seize the opportunity ahead around this. You know, we will need mass data centers where technology is housed. We will need critical thinking and skills from uh startups. [music] Uh we will need to recycle old equipment as part of this. we will need to potentially reform our education system. This is a great opportunity through through maybe leveling up the UK where we don't necessarily rely on the concentration as we have done in other the adjacent services that and markets which have been so prevalent for the [music] UK. Again, I think that's an opportunity for all. As I conclude this journey, I've reflected on the opinions I've heard from experts and UK citizens. As we voyage further into the era of AI, there is a palpable optimism for what AI could be and a visceral concern for what it might be. I remain hopeful that with real dialogue that extends from government to industry to UK citizens, we will have the knowledge to make informed decisions on these important topics. This is a moment in time, one in which we will all inevitably look back at as a pivotal moment not just for society but for humanity. It is my hope and my continued mission to encourage informed decisions, discussion, and conscious decision-m that will deliver a technological future that we all [music] want to experience. The responsibility for shaping AI in the UK that belongs to us all. Lastly, I want to thank the people who I met on this journey who freely gave me their time and their opinions.

We explore both the social and environmental footprints of AI, confronting the deeper questions behind the technology: will AI work for the few or for the many, and do we have the foresight to guide its direction? For more information visit: https://revolution.movie/