On 2 October 2024 The Times published Don’t expect AI to just fix everything, professor warns, James Hurley’s report from The Times and The Sunday Times Tech Summit in London. Neil Lawrence was responding to remarks at the summit by Feryal Clark, Labour’s then new minister for AI and digital government.

On a panel moderated by Danny Fortson — with Naila Murray (Meta AI Research) and Marc Warner (Faculty AI) — Neil rejected the idea that public services have “completely failed” and that artificial general intelligence could simply replace them. Most things work, he said; there is plenty to improve, but once the story becomes “that’s all failed, let’s replace with AI,” the approach is extremely dangerous. Hurley summarised his criticism of “confident predictions” about the technology in the same spirit: an absurd and reductionist reading of the complexities of human intelligence and human society.

Amadeus Capital’s summit takeaways also note Neil’s point that generative AI has changed how ordinary people interact with machines — speaking to them directly, unmediated by software engineers — while the policy risk remains misplaced faith in AI as a central fix for institutions.

The argument sits with the group’s AI Adoption and AI for Policy and Public Services work.