What I’d tell the new prime minister – as a founder and a father

Britain is about to get a new Prime Minister, and as you’ve probably heard, Labour MP Andy Burnham looks set to take the reins. When he walks through that door, he has an enormous amount of ground to make up on AI, and not much time to do it.

In my day job as CEO of MAGIC AI, I spend a lot of time arguing for AI’s potential. I often make the case, with genuine conviction, that artificial intelligence is a force for good, and that Britain should be backing it far more aggressively than it’s doing at present.

While I haven’t moved on this point since becoming a dad, I’ve found myself thinking more and more about what kind of world AI is quietly assembling around us. My kids are going to grow up in that world, and I don’t get to choose the version they’re going to inherit.

So, if I were given five minutes with the incoming prime minister, here is what I’d say.

The UK talks about being an AI superpower more than it acts like one. When you are a small startup trying to run computer vision at scale, which is exactly what we do at MAGIC AI, the gap between the infrastructure we have and the infrastructure we need is not theoretical. It shows up in your costs, your timelines, and eventually your decisions about where to build. Relying on US data centres forever, for instance, won’t give us the manoeuvrability we need to kick on.

The next Prime Minister should be thinking seriously about sovereign compute capacity, not just as an economic argument, but as a matter of national competitiveness. And alongside that, a visa system that moves at the pace of the sector it is supposed to serve, and a school curriculum that treats AI literacy as a core skill rather than a nice-to-have addition.

There are plenty of things we could be doing in the health sector that would be nothing short of transformational. Right now, for example, the NHS waits until people are ill to treat them. But if we started using AI in preventive contexts to identify problems earlier, we would significantly reduce the burden hospitals currently bear.

These are just a few of the changes I think about when I imagine a better world for my kids. But crucially, they have to be developed safely and steadily.

I think some founders avoid discussing this topic when they meet politicians, perhaps because they’re all too busy making the case for less friction. But if we continue to conceptualise “safety” as something to be pitted against innovation, it’s our children, not us, that will lose out in the biggest way.

Before I became a dad, I’m not sure I would have sat with that thought for as long. But parenthood does something to the way you think about consequences. The “move fast and break things” instinct that most founders have begins to feel a lot less clever when you have children. In the context of AI development, the stakes are high. When things break, real people end up living with the fallout.

Britain has a real opportunity to lead on responsible AI, and that should not get traded away in the rush to look pro-business. The AI being shaped right now in labs, in startups, in government policy is the world my kids – and your kids – are going to inherit. I want speed and safety to be treated as compatible, not competing – and I hope Andy agrees.

This content is contributed by a guest author. Startups.co.uk / MVF does not endorse or take responsibility for any views, advice, analysis or claims made within this post.