Peter Kyle | The Future of AI

0:00This episode is brought to you by Facebook. So you were scrolling on Marketplace and there it was, the bike you'd been searching for. You sent a message and it turned out the seller was super chatty, kind of funny, and an avid cyclist. The next thing you know, you're in a cycling crew. Well, a community cycling group. The thing about Facebook, you might find more than what you're looking for. From a browse to a bike ride, this summer, find more on Facebook. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome? That's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks.

0:45Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required, compatibility and availability varies 18+. Welcome back to Jimmy's Jobs of the Future. Today I'm joined by Peter Carl, Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology. Probably the best job in government, I think. Peter's had a remarkable career. Having left school with no qualifications, realising that he was dyslexic, he went to university slightly later in life. He's now become one of the most prominent figures in the Labour government. We go deep with Peter today on the future of artificial intelligence.

1:23He believes that we might have artificial general intelligence by the end of this parliament. I believe that will lead to a transformational effect on our economy, both good and bad. But it was great to talk to Peter in depth about it today. On today's episode with Peter Carl. Make sure you subscribe so we can continue to get bigger and bigger guests.

1:49Peter, welcome to Jimmy's Jobs of the Future. Thanks for having me. Now the last time we saw each other we were in even more salubrious surroundings than this. We were at the King's Awards for Enterprise which obviously sort of celebrates the best of British business at Winter Castle. What stands out for you on evenings like that? Well just the sheer breadth of talent and where it comes from. The great thing about that was just walking around. I met people from the northeast. you meet people from all parts of the country and they're all totally thrilled to bits to be there yeah and it was just lovely and I met businesses who are really small very community based but doing extraordinary things and I'm always aware that right now up and down the country there are people who are doing things in a new way they're doing things that are genuinely impactful people's lives and creating wealth for people who never thought they would have wealth and they must feel overlooked and they must feel that they're just doing it going home and nobody notices so moments like that is a time when you can say you are noticed and you are really respected and look you're standing in the room with the king yeah you've got secretaries of state here and we're all here for you and we know we have bent our diaries for you yeah and just that moment it means more than i think people realize those sorts of events those moments to kind of take stock and appreciate it were there any particular companies you met because i'm always even though it's not just for small businesses i'm always quite taken by there are a lot of businesses that you won't have heard of that are small and medium-sized enterprises from right across the country bigger businesses can still apply for it but they're they tend to be few and far between were there any that particularly there was there were three guys who all came from the same town and they they all did different they were one of the toolmaker one of them it was all quite um sort of manufacturing based yeah and they all knew of each other but didn't really know each other uh but they'd all found out that the three of them had won these awards and they traveled down together and i i just assumed they're from the same company because by the time i'd walked over to them in the in the hall they were they were sort of laughing and they they looked like they were old friends.

4:06But that's what those things are for. It's great. Yeah, it's a really special evening. And the king said to me, he said, Jimmy, I've got a job for you. I need to promote these awards more. So I've done that. I've done my best. I was like, good one. I'm interviewing Peter next week. You've been very open about your dyslexia. And it's something that I found when I was in government. one of my reflections on it was that it wasn't very well set up for me as dyslexic. Like lots of writing briefs, lots of that type of thing. And that's not the way that I kind of learn and it's not the best way that I kind of communicate at all.

4:43How have you found being in government for the last year and having dyslexia? I have been open about it, but I chose to speak about it at the time I was comfortable speaking about it. It wasn't when I'd just come in as an MP. I had left it a good few years before I decided it was time to talk about it. Being dyslexic, being gay, being a man, being... You know, we have multiple characteristics that make us the people we are. And I think it's important, and it's certainly important for me, that you reveal and talk about those characteristics on your own terms, in your own way, because it's so central to who you are.

5:21But when you're in public life, I do think that there's an onus to share with people what makes you tick. I think it's important for people to see what makes you who you are because that contributes to who you are as a public figure and makes you more accessible. But if you have a characteristic which is a barrier in life as well and has been a challenge in life, I feel the added need to share that in a way that other people at different points in their lives and careers may be slightly overcome by it and knowing that somebody else is sort of succeeding in a different way or in any way might well help them.

6:02So yeah, I did speak about it openly and spoke about what it was like as a child growing up with it, me discovering I had it, and then life with it afterwards. In this job, I'm very fortunate because as a Secretary of State, you have a big private office, which means you have lots of secretaries there who are there to filter up the workload from the different corners, all corners of the department, and present it to you in a way that gets the decisions a department needs, but also to look out for me as an individual at work and as a Secretary of State. The challenge has been for them to understand me and me to communicate to them how it is.

6:38And it is very difficult because it expresses itself in different ways and it's not intuitive. Dyslexia isn't intuitive and it's different for different people. And I'm learning the job at the same time as trying to learn it with specific learning characteristics. yes I'm also auditory dyslexic as well so the idea that things can just be read to me to make it easy isn't always a solution so but one of the things I did learn when I was a child before I even knew I had dyslexia is that I would always I always had to work harder than other people to achieve the same and the same is true now I just have to find had to find a way of doing it where the department gets out of me what it needs and I do it on my terms in my way yeah and still have a semblance of a life as well when every now and then at least friends and family can see me and I can do things like have to do a bit of exercise and things that actually just clear your mind and actually contribute to you being more resilient and better at the job as well so there's a lot of diversity in how I consume information yeah a lot of it is discursive you know I will take home the packs of work yeah sometimes I'll allocate work time during the day when I will just sit in silence and not be disturbed so I can just rattle through some of the reading that I have yeah and you have to read very quick summaries of things that are going on sometimes you have to read policy documents that are very large so I now have to just find the best ways of doing it each day and also it's like it is a very technical brief probably most technical right so like how do you um how do you try and interpret these scientific uh methods and so on i mean i remember hearing that you have been using ai a bit to kind of like talk you through them yeah so i would describe this job as you have layer upon layer of knowledge when you first come into the job of course the department i'm responsible for has a space uh sector it has broadband gigabit it has 5G rollout, the physical infrastructure.

8:49I'm growing the AI infrastructure, so the data infrastructure for the country. I'm also responsible for the research side of higher education, all R &D for the country, so the pharmaceuticals and life sciences side of research, and then all tech, and some critical technologies like quantum and AI and others, including all of the regulation that goes with online activity. So it's a very, very broad brief, and all areas of that are very, very technical. So my advice to people going into jobs where there's a steep learning curve is don't try and consume it all at once, but get the foundational knowledge you need to start with, and don't panic that you haven't gone home knowing everything, and don't panic that you have to know everything so that you can give the decisions that people need because you have to rely on people to make those decisions at the beginning, and over time you rely on them less and less because layer upon layer you get sort of layers of sediment of knowledge that just builds up that you can draw on at any point so the experience you have as being a secretary of state i'm a much better secretary of state i believe in on my terms than i was two months ago yeah definitely six months ago and almost certainly than when i first came in and my ability to now place knowledge and know know what i don't know in order to get that knowledge to make the decision that's been asked of me I'm just much more proficient at now yeah that comes with being quite self-aware which might well be linked to me overcoming barriers to learning in the past which is one of the characteristics that may have sprung from that but it's also work ethic and and just making sure you I was just about to say I don't think I've heard a cabinet minister talk about it like that in that way before and then you use the word you know I'm quite self-aware and I thought oh well maybe maybe personally with my learning I am and tell us about your first job because that was quite formative do you mean my first full-time job at the body shop's head office yeah because my first job was on my i think back then i don't know what i don't actually know what the age is now it was 13 back then when you could first yes money yeah uh and on my 13th birthday i got the job so i've worked every so what did you do you're 13 i was collecting eggs in a battery farm battery chicken farm well I grew up in Bognor Regis and there was a chicken farm down the road it's it's it's free range now and I go back there but back then it certainly wasn't um how much were you paid for that I can't remember but it was it oh god it must have been like 50p for for a whole bunch of these big trays of eggs but it was awful and you used to you'd be walking down collecting them and one of the other kids that was collecting because it was all kids doing this used to throw an egg over at the top and they've been doing it for months and they were all like very good aims and one would just land on your head from the other side of the aisle and stuff so by the time you got home quite a training food politician I hadn't thought of that I honestly hadn't thought of that uh anyhow but when I got home my mum always just made me stand there my pants and hose me down because it was I was just such a mess and it stank so much but anyway it was it was work and I loved work and I loved the money um and even before that before I was 13 I once went on the beach because I grew up as I say in Bognor Regis and we'd come back from a holiday somewhere and there was somebody who's selling ice cream on the beach so I went my mum and to Sainsbury's and got a big tub of ice cream and cones and I walked along the beach selling ice cream I must have been I don't know eight nine ten when I was doing that well that's quite entrepreneurial but my first job that you're referring to is when I got work at the body shops head office and I'd left school with no qualifications and so I know usable qualifications I did get them, but it were all like yous and whatever they were, sort of the failure ones.

12:35And I applied for these jobs and was always very socially aware. And I was getting offered jobs. And on the day one, I would go in and just say, this isn't for me, and leave. And my mum just went, for God's sake, find a company you want to work for and get a job there. And the body shop's head office was just down the road in Littlehampton. This is 1989. I was 18. the body shop was going through the roof it was you know elita was it was becoming an icon of social change and campaigning and and business success and i applied for a job and got rejected in the end i applied for so many jobs i went and sat in reception there until somebody came out and interviewed me and in the afternoon and then when i got home there was a message on the answer phone saying you've got a job in the accounts department in the purchase ledger so matching goods that come in past quality control with the invoices and then authorizing it to be paid putting it into this very arcane mainframe computer yeah i was useless at it because it would look at the job and look at what my brain is good and not good at it was just the worst thing imaginable but i loved the company so much yeah i was so inspired by anita roddick even though i had i didn't meet her for for quite a long time and i so determined to succeed in the company that i used to go in secretly at weekends on a Sunday and then just work and work and work and work so that nobody knew that I was struggling to keep up with the volume of work that was there and I didn't know what was going on in my brain I knew I loved the company I just knew I couldn't do that sort of work very well yeah and then that's how I met Anita Roddick because she was the only other person that used to come in on a Sunday and every now and then I saw her zip down the end of the office and up to her office and then one week she spotted me and came over and started talking to me and then I I had suddenly this force of nature trying to sort of beat me into shape and push me out of my comfort zone.

14:28And I was terrified all the time. She was making me go out and do public speaking when I was a teenager. And they were expecting the highest paid person in the company, who's a global icon, and they used to get this scruffy, long-haired, unqualified, lowest paid person in the whole company turning up to speak to them. She was amazing. And she encouraged you to kind of like apply for university as well because was there a period at 18, 19, were you aware you were dyslexic then? No. I mean, were you worried then about like, you weren't fitting into the academic hierarchy and so on? Well, there was no academic hierarchy for me and I grew up in a really loving family who my dad left school at 14 to become an apprentice stonemason to his dad in Liverpool.

15:14He went to the Navy at 16. He left school in his, he left the Navy in his mid-20s to become a daughter or salesman. Then he moved south and worked his way up this company and ended up buying and owning the company. And his work ethic was incredible, incredible. And I've inherited his work ethic, but I've also got the middle-class sensibilities he worked so hard to give me. And so, but he didn't go to university. He's not alive now. When he's heard me talk about this in the past, he was a bit upset because he thought I was talking down to the fact that he didn't have any qualifications and didn't go to university and that I was the first Kyle to get an A-level and go to university, get a degree and then a doctorate and then all this stuff.

15:59But when he said that to me, I was crushed because I was saying it in admiration of him. Real, genuine pride and admiration in what he achieved. But university was never, ever mentioned to me. No adult in school, obviously, would mention university to me. At home, it wasn't part of the vocabulary of our family. So when Anita Roddick mentioned it to me when I was 25, by which time I'd been an aid worker for a good few years, working with a project that she'd set up, it was a bolt out of the blue. And for me, it was a leap into the unknown. and now one of the reasons I'm so motivated in politics is that young people from all backgrounds should be comfortable wherever they go and the experiences you get growing up should be introducing people to lots of different places and people and backgrounds and social settings so that not just so that we're encouraging kids to go down a certain path but if they choose a certain path and you come from any background it shouldn't be a leap into the unknown and that's something that that I've always I've always got comfortable with doing these leaps into the unknown and quite enjoy it now which is which is unusual but I think it's interesting going to university I often say to people if they're not sure like you're going actually when you're a bit later in your 20s is quite a good thing to do because you did geography and development and economics and that that is something that well it's taken me a long time to realize but actually I'm really passionate about.

17:33If I were to go and do a master's now, it would be in that, I think. Not so much on the international side, more actually at home and how we kind of develop our cities and so on. I find it fascinating. But that's taken me years to kind of realise you're interested in all that stuff. And often I think we're asking almost 17-year-olds to be making applications to university. It's just asking people to go quite deep, quite early on in their careers about that. So I think your story is kind of really interesting. What's the one thing that people should know about geography and development? PhD. Oh, God.

18:07Well, a PhD... Oh, God. I wouldn't wish a PhD on my worst enemy. My wife's just finished it. Well, there you are. And I think, you know, when you get a knighthood, it's very sexy, it's this, but if you get a knighthood, your partner gets called a lady. Lady, yeah, yeah. I think if you get a doctorate, your partner should get a title as well for what you put for what you put people through your families through your partner your friendships is is is amazing and i and i knew i had the barriers by then the challenges by then yeah but i was so you make a really interesting point i am the biggest defender of universities i hate it when people talk down university education but it is completely correct to say that every young person has got to find their own pathway through education into the work which is right for them and what well they want and is suited to the the potential that they have and the potential they're exploring having said that I don't think it should be there shouldn't just be a conveyor belt into university simply because you come from a family where everyone went to university therefore you should do it I think it has to be the result of a thoughtful process and one where you do actually really understand what learning characteristics you have what potential and talents you have and sometimes that's not always just expressed in the obvious way and for some people not everyone but for some people going into the workplace and coming to university a bit later is entirely the right thing to do and of course I learned this the hard way I mean Anita suggested I go to university I applied to university and got rejected I ended up going back to secondary school when I was 25 and sitting in a classroom with 16 year olds for a whole year to get the qualifications that the university had asked for and then they rejected me again I mean I got into university because Anita Roddick called the university and said that she would return the honorary doctorate her honorary doctorate unless they had Peter Kynan as a student and then of course I get in this world opens up I found it genuinely exhilarating.

20:16I found it energizing, exciting. It was just thrilling to be around so many people who just knew so much. And then I loved the social side as well. I loved the sporting. I've never been team sporty. I don't want to make myself out of you that, but I loved the gym side of it. I loved the sheer freedom of it. But I'd been out of, I'd been in a disciplined work environment for six, maybe seven years. before then so I had the discipline that I went into university with yeah so I could explore all of that and still be really disciplined I was going to seminars on courses that I wasn't studying because they were interesting and I was just I was just consuming it all so when the university asked if I would stay and do a doctorate it was the funniest thing in the world for me because they'd spent so much time trying to stop me getting in yeah they were then trying to stop me leaving so it was you know i was very aware of all this and this was the moment that i became i started to discover a political purpose yeah because nobody in that university said we shouldn't have peter khan as a student he's not one of us but the system itself was very very good at just diverting people like me who don't have the instinctive vocabulary background pathway into university education away this was 1996 so 14 of school leaders are going to university then so the system is very good at diverting people like me away uh i still don't to this day know why i persisted so much but that persistence uh stood me in very good stead because it's a theme of my career what is it that makes you angry because one of the things like speaking to people in advance this, both sides of the aisle and so on, you have a fabulous reputation of getting on with people, all of that.

22:09I was just like, I could barely get anyone to say a bad word about you anywhere. Even your dad. Yeah, even my dad. But what sort of makes Peter Karl angry? What does fire you up? It's very, very rare for me to be angry.

22:30probably the only thing that really gets under my skin is people who don't make an argument but they get personal they make a personal attack and social media is the worst at this and you see sneering and so it's when I love engaging with people that I disagree with I mean, it's where, where's the interest in sitting in a group of people you just all agree with? And where's the learning in that? So, you know, even on my own side, I enjoy that experience. But I, it's very, very rare for me to get angry. I'll get frustrated. I think any dyslexic will understand the real inner frustration of trying to get something off the page or something.

23:25and you're at that moment, you can't quite get that word in or whatever, or a paper just suddenly goes a bit blurry in your mind and things. And you get that flicker of real, real frustration. But in terms of making me angry, very, very rare. I don't think many people have ever seen me truly angry. But it was just interesting when you were saying that, it was the university almost slightly funneling you off to the side and so on. and I just thought that was it. It's interesting, because it often is those things that happened early on in our careers which sort of end up being the formative things that we look kind of back on, right?

24:05It is. As I say, I still don't quite understand why I persisted to the degree I did, but it's, again, one of these things that made me, that gave me political purpose, because I accept that most young people accept no for the first time they hear it, and they act on that no. for me I just didn't and I never have but I've been hearing it all my life in different ways and so when it got to the point where I wanted to stand for an MP I'd been offered when I was in my 30s when I say offered I'd worked as a policy special advisor and the party suggested that I stood and I didn't feel ready for it I didn't feel personally ready for it there are other things I wanted to deal with in my life and get skills in my life before I even thought about it even though by then I had a political purpose.

24:56But when I did want to stand, I was called and said, you shouldn't stand in Hove, which is where I lived. You should stand, they suggested, somewhere, because Hove's a Tory seat. Yes. And go and stand in the safe Labour seat because we think you'd be a good MP and we'd like you in there and have a solid seat. And I just said, I just want to stand in the place I really love. and I love living and I think it would be for me it would be dishonest to stand somewhere else and I think I would lose some of the love of the job anyway this person said but you're going to lose you shouldn't do it and I just thought oh god how many times have I heard that in my life yeah so of course I do it and you just figure out what it takes to to win yeah I mean why I mean it's sort of like you know I did what it took to get to university once I'd reconciled myself to it.

25:51That included going back to secondary school when I was 25. Now, when you look at a seat like Hove, which is a Tory seat in an election cycle where I knew from the outset we were going to lose overall, the overall election. So the exam question I had at the beginning was, how do you win a local election campaign in a general election campaign that your party is going to lose? And that was written on the top of a bit of paper. And I got together a whole group of people. Somebody got together a group of people who were all very experienced to help me answer that question and that I did to the letter for the whole for the whole campaign yeah so you know the question isn't you're you're going to lose or you're going to be denied or you shouldn't even attempt because in normal circumstances with normal people that's what happens the question is always what will it take to succeed and for you to be the person that either drives it delivers it or achieves it makes it happen um what what is that number one thing right because it not only did you turn the seat it's now a 20 ,000 majority as well too modest to say but but what is it that sort of like you were able to to do in a down cycle for the Labour Party at that point?

27:03Well one of the things was that you you know and incidentally when you say what will it take to achieve something if you just write down and decide what it takes to achieve something at least you can make a decision whether you do it or not if you think actually I haven't got it in me to do that or I don't want to put the effort to do that fine but make a decision based on what you know it will actually take to achieve it so in that particular campaign there was there was a series of things i had to do the group that i trusted who i knew would tell me the truth and never ever tell me what i wanted to hear came to the conclusion that i'm pretty good with people yeah therefore if that is an asset I've got to meet a certain number of people face to face and they it literally came down to you must meet this number of people every single day between now and the general election to get to a certain number of people and it was tens of thousands of people that I had to meet so so that was first thing just me being as visible and engaging personally and then it was finding a way which I still think is is one of the most challenging things about being an individual politician whether you're a candidate or in office is that people engage with you in so many different ways they will see you in the street and they'll come and chat to you they'll see you on the doorstep and chat with you they'll see you in a public environment where you are speaking and projecting two groups of people they're going to see you on tv and listen to you on the radio they're going to see you on social media but not just social media there's lots of different types of social media out there and they're going to see you ultimately in the house of commons so are you the same person in each of those because if you're a different person that you meet in the street to the person they see on social media to a different person that they see in a tv debate then you're not authentic yes and you you everything everything goes and you just become in their eyes just like everyone else and and that I think is the hardest thing and there are times I've I feel I've let people down because sometimes I have been wound up in a tv debate and I've said something intolerant or whatever which isn't who I aspire to be and I think goodness people who are back home who have met me in the street or you know they'll see a different me and it's not the me that I want to be so I think in politics being that person and finding a way of expressing the essence of who you are through so many different vehicles is a really tough thing and that is why I had decided not to go into politics young and early and when they offered me to go into a safe seat in in my in my 30s I said no because there was still a lot about me I needed to discover and be comfortable with and so I think you the more you really really know yourself in politics, the easier it is to project who you are and be comfortable doing it without having to think all the time before you speak.

30:09If you like what Peter Carl has to say about deep tech and science, you'll probably like this quick word from our partner, BGF. BGF is one of the UK and Ireland's most active growth investors, backing the breakthrough innovation shaping our future. BGF has committed 500 million over the next five years to early stage deep tech and life sciences. From advanced materials and semiconductors to medtech diagnostics and drug discovery, it's part of a wider£3 billion pledge to support ambitious founders building the industries and jobs of the future. The early stage team invests between£3 and£10 million from late seed to series B, combining technical expertise, commercial insight and patient capital to help bold ideas scale globally.

30:59Since 2019, BGF has deployed over 280 million into early stage innovation. Portfolio companies include Organox, Cambridge GAN devices, Echion Technologies and TidalSense. Pioneers transforming sectors from organ transplantation to ultra-fast charging and respiratory diagnostics. With teams in London, Cambridge and across the UK, BGF is uniquely positioned to help science and technology nationwide supporting the UK's ambition to become a global innovation superpower learn more at bgf.co.uk I think that's true I also think it came in at an interesting moment of where I heard Ed Miliband talking about this the other day which was like the end of the sort of new labour era of command and control and message is discipline, discipline is message, all of that and then that sort of moment in 2016 where it flips to authenticity.

31:56You sort of came in in that window there of when it was changing. And he was pretty open about saying he didn't quite get it right at all. He was also a young leader. But the thing I would say is when I went through the list of new Labour MPs the other day, I was struck by how many are in their 30s. Like it's a young bunch, right? I know you need the energy of that. But yeah, I was – because at the beginning I was like, oh, they're younger than me, they're younger than me. And by the end I was like, oh, that's rare. There's one that's older than me. It's pretty extraordinary. But anyway, let's talk about the job, because I think you've got the best job in government, Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology.

32:35But I was thinking about it, and you've got this quite tricky sort of triangle, I think, to kind of marry up, which is where you're going to be the biggest customer of sort of technology, like in terms of you're going to be making a lot of purchasing decisions, you talk about the infrastructure. you need to be tech's kind of biggest promoter as well with the challenges that that comes but then also you're the sort of biggest regulator or overseeing of the regulator as well so it's this quite sort of tricky triangle that you have that you've kind of got to do um how how do you approach the job yeah it's not unique it's the same circumstances are there for for most not all but many government departments health for example there's a lot of regulation in health and also there's a lot of private sector engagement in health, even though it's not privately owned.

33:26We are commissioning from the private sector a lot. But there's a very particular debate around the role of big technology in particular in Britain. And we have a sector press, the media that scrutinises technology seems to be quite cynical about technology itself. and it's quite difficult, I found it quite difficult to be really, to reflect excitement about what I believe technology can do for our country and have that interpreted as a genuine excitement for what I believe our country can and should be achieving and what it means for everyone from every background and the sort of progressive nature of technology if we get it right and use the agency we have as a government without it being seen as being in the pocket of big tech and all those things.

34:16So again, we are a sophisticated society and economy, and we're a sophisticated government. Our regulators are fully independent. I do not control any of the regulators, but I do pass the laws which sets the frameworks that regulators adhere to, and that's all public. When it comes to the relationships with the tech companies, I mean, I make no procurement decisions as Secretary of State. What I do do is set the overall areas that I want technology to be involved in our society on behalf of government. And if that involves contracting to a company, then that comes out of my hands and goes to my department.

35:01And I understand that there is an opaqueness to that in the eyes of the public. But I think that isn't what I would worry about. That's what I, from my perspective, I don't think the public should worry about that, even though I know there's a lot of scrutiny on it. I think that the real question that I grapple with is that when you have global companies which are innovating on a scale that the British state cannot match, what is the relationship you have with them which delivers the most for British people? And how do we do so in a way that retains the agency that the state has on behalf of citizens to keep them safe and look out for their best interests whilst shaping that relationship?

35:50Give me a couple of examples. Amazon spends almost double on R &D than the entire British state does. and they're spending it on singular purposes for technological development like the space program and some of the other commercial activities they do and cloud computing. We're spending it on everything. We're funding the entire research sector in higher education and we're doing life sciences investment. We're doing right across the board. So when they are investing that much, it is no surprise that they come up with solutions that we are not capable of doing as a state. So therefore, it would be absurd for us not to engage with that technology and put it to use for Britain.

36:36And therefore, we have different tools. I will legislate where needed. I will regulate where there is the need to put a floor reassurance for people about standards and about safety and about these matters. But there is another thing that government has the power to do, and that is statecraft. And statecraft will never replace legislation and regulation and the laws that we can pass. But the kind of relationships we're talking about here and the scale and influence of these companies, we should be deploying statecraft. And what do I mean by statecraft? Building relationships, sometimes personal relationships, but these are relationships which are on behalf of government.

37:24I am acting as a Secretary of State as they are acting as a Chief Executive or a Chief Investment Officer or one of these positions. And we are negotiating on behalf of two organisations, mine, the British State, theirs, their organisation. But you treat them with the respect for which they are entitled as achieving astonishing levels of commercial success and innovation. but negotiating, building relationships, using those relationships to sell the best of Britain, to deliver for Britain but never ever putting to one side the standards and safeties and other responsibilities we have on behalf of the country.

38:07So in some regards we are deploying statecraft to private organisations that we have traditionally in the past reserved for state-to-state relationships. But that is just reflecting the world that we're living in. And it is not disempowering or a sign of disempowerment for our country. It is actually a sign of an empowered country that is acting with confidence and using all the tools that it has and recognizing the world as we actually find it, not the world that we have because we cannot any longer control certain aspects of global life just by sitting in Whitehall, Brussels or Washington and passing laws anymore.

38:54We have to engage, listen, learn and make the argument and that's what I'm aspiring to do. And what has excited you most that you've seen? Because you must get to see some great things. what sort of you know this is this is a media outlet that is positive about technology generally speaking so you can be uh more more open and excited here what have you seen that's kind of it's getting things done i mean everyone loves hearing the negatives about government yeah about the challenges of sort of cultural inertia and the the caution of government and all these things All of that exists, but it is the most amazing platform for getting things done.

39:38And when you get things done and you get things right, you can make such an impact. And so there's lots of things I could talk about, policies. The AI Opportunities Action Plan, I think, will be profound for the future of our country because it's about infrastructure and it's about skills. Come on to AI, don't worry. But the thing that I think that gave me the most amount of personal satisfaction was something I learned a lot from that I think was my best example of leading my department and also doing something that in government that reflected life outside and that was the announcement and the creation of the digital center of government so what that means technically is that when we came in I consolidated digital services from across government into one powerful digital center.

40:30So units came across from government and we have a big powerful digital center of government. In the first week I came in, I asked what it would take to have an app, a government app, and then a digital driving license. I came back and said that it couldn't be done within the first five years. The digital driving license would take more than five years. I said that is astonishing to hear because I'm sure the companies that we all know as household names aren't waiting five years to design an app. Then they came back to me a few weeks, well actually it was about a week later, with a timeline that I'd asked for and it had come out of three years.

41:05Well, the Gov.uk app is going to land this month in June. It's going to have followed very shortly afterwards with an AI-powered chatbot that will give intuitive conversational experiences and access to information for all government data, sort of information, more than 700 ,000 pages of information. Then we'll have the digital wallet going into it with the digital veterans card to start with. And by the end of this year, we'll have the digital driving license with the full online and offline facilities you expect from the driving license, including the age verification digital ID system. And I launched it.

41:47The other thing I did that was, the thing I did that's kind intuitive was just before Christmas we were coming up to launch it in January and I said to the team government just waits till everything's ready yeah and you keep it secret and then suddenly boom you land it when everything is ready to land yeah and I said but out there in the world that we represent which is tech they have these keynotes and they have these meetings and they announce these products and services that their consumers and customers and users can expect from them in the coming year yeah why don't we do that as a government why don't we just tell the public what we're working on yeah and get them excited about it get them used to it before it lands and no one said no uh so i then said and i think i should just announce it on a stage wearing jeans and a t-shirt just so you look normal uh no one said no there was a sort of there were eyes darting around but no one tried to stop me doing it so in january uh and the other thing i did was I did it in Whitechapel which is the the building where we have the digital center yeah a thousand data programmers engineers and program people with programming experience and deploying experience and we built a stage there and we had all the media there into the department and then we went once all the media was there and the guests and stakeholders are there all of the engineers and the staff from Whitechapel came in and crowded around the outside.