20VC: UK Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak on Investing More in AI Safety Research Than Any Other Country in the World, How AI Changes the Future of Education, His Top 5 Priorities as Prime Minister Today & How to Make the UK the Centre of AI

0:00It's important that I restore people's trust in politics. I want to change how politics is done so people believe in their politicians, believe in their prime minister, believe in their government and believe that they're doing the right thing, but also genuinely able to make a difference to their lives. Our new task force, AI task force, has£100 million, which means that we're investing more in safety research for AI than any government anywhere in the world. This is 20VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and going to Downing Street and sitting down with our Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, for this discussion.

0:30Honestly, it was one of the greatest honours that I've had since starting 20VC, over 8 years and 3 ,000 episodes ago. I want to say a huge thank you to Rishi for making the time, and his team, for all they did behind the scenes to make this happen. What an incredible discussion it is as part of London Tech Week. And so, without further ado, I'm thrilled to welcome Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak.

0:55you have now arrived at your destination rishi i am so excited to do this we last did this in covid on zoom to do this in person is such a joy so thank you so much for doing this one it's great it's great to see you welcome to down it's lovely to finally meet i want to start that i think parents shape us in so many ways when you think back to your childhood and your parents how do you think about how they shaped you today? You know, my parents are both in healthcare, which is quite important for how I was brought up. So my mum was a pharmacist. She ran a local pharmacy. My dad was a GP and I grew up working for my mum.

1:27So for me, just seeing the importance of the NHS and healthcare to people's lives was just a hugely important part of our upbringing. And it matters to me today, which is why I spend so much time focusing on the NHS and making sure that people get the healthcare they need. I guess the other thing is my mum was a small business owner. She ran her pharmacy. I worked in it. I helped her with the account. So I saw what it took to run a small business, the trials of tribulations, but also how fulfilling it was to provide jobs for people and make a difference that way. But perhaps the most powerful thing is education.

1:59It's a kind of classic Indian immigrant thing anyway, but for my parents, education was everything. So they strive and sacrifice so that me and my brother and sister could just have great education because they believe that was the best way you could help of children have a better life than you and that is something that i passionately believe today so i think education is the closest thing we have to a silver bullet and part of my job as pm is to make sure everyone has access to world-class education can i ask you bizarre question yeah i mean i'm not meant to go off scrums but when you become pm do you call your mother and this you know gosh on the day i'm trying to remember actually i don't know if i did i actually i was i was i'll remember if i did it was so busy that day i'm very close to them you know i saw them actually i saw them i I saw them yesterday, as it turned out.

2:41They came to see us for lunch, but I saw them a few weeks ago because I was back in Southampton for a football match not that long ago, and they still have season tickets at St. Mary's, and so I got to see them during the game. It was actually quite sweet because my mum had, they were upset because I'd come to visit the pharmacy that my mum ran earlier in the week. I hadn't told them I was back in Southampton. They were very upset. They tried to come and see me. It wasn't possible. And my mum had got some Indian sweets that she wanted to give me that she'd made called Burfi that she couldn't give me then, but then she managed to give them to be at football match, which was important to her.

3:12And oddly enough, I saw President Zelensky on the Monday after that, and he and I were chatting and he was hungry. So actually, I gave him some of my mum's birth feed, which she was very happy to. Yeah, she was thrilled by that. So, yeah. Now, obviously, this London Tech Week, I want to dive straight in and ask you, when we think about kind of collaboration and working together, respectfully, I think there's a big chasm between private sector knowledge and then public sector regulation. how do we think about working together most effectively between these two not just all opposing but just different yeah you know i was talking earlier at london tech week and one of the things i said is you know what's the most important thing that people should look to to why the uk can be the best place for this anywhere in the world and i said the answer was leadership people in your industry having the confidence of the government and in particular me as prime minister gets it i do it's partly my background where i spent my time working whether it's in California or elsewhere.

4:07I want to make sure that government acts a bit more like the world that you come from in terms of its ability to be innovative, to move at pace. But I think it's really important that government is engaging constantly with the innovative part of our country, because that's how we're going to drive growth and create jobs for people. And government needs to be understanding what do we need to put in place to make sure that that is successful. I totally agree with you. How do you think about measure of success of what we do and how we work together. Yeah. So one of the things I did, which was disruptive and radical in a good way, was I created a brand new department, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, because it was important to me.

4:45I wanted to send a strong signal that this agenda is something that government needs to take seriously and do differently. And that department is going to do things differently. It's attracting people from the industry. It's taking a slightly more risk approach to innovation. That is all powerful. How do we measure success? Look, traditional things. How much venture capital are we raising here? How many unicorns are we creating here? I think we all know the stats, right? More than France and Germany combined, more unicorns than anywhere apart from the US and China. Are the next exciting technologies all happening here, whether that's quantum, engineering, biology, AI, fintech?

5:22I think those are all the kind of obvious ways to measure it. But are large companies coming to locate here, which they are, right? Actually, just an incredible announcement today, Andreessen Horowitz, It's all the world's most successful VC investors opening their first international office here in the UK. And that just comes on the back of Palantir saying that they're going to do their AI headquarters for research here in the UK. And we've had all the large labs, Anthropic, OpenAI, joining DeepMind and opening international offices here in the UK. So again, those are all metrics that tell me we must be getting something right because companies are voting with their feet.

5:57How much do you think success can count? I know that sounds a strange one but like when you start see Andreessen it's kind of like Domino's falling yes and suddenly I spend a lot of time on Twitter I have a lot more free time than you do but you suddenly see people go like oh wow and like this is a real signal and then you saw a lot more because you see oh wow is it the next Miami and are we seeing this like incredible rise again at London yeah I think so I think success breeds success as well given the pace the tech ecosystem works at. Government needs to be responsive to that pace and just constantly show that we're moving forward.

6:31Andreessen coming is great. Lots of people are already here. I think things are going really well already. If I think back, look, this is a country that was at the forefront of the Industrial Revolution. Think of all the things that were invented here in the UK in steam engines, the forefront of electricity, how we mechanized textiles, how we built modern roads, the process of making steel, the lawnmower saying it was another thing. I mean, you nail it. it was invented here i think we're at the cusp of another period like that and there's no doubt in my mind that the uk can leave that again as we do in the past i remember i first fell in love with venture when i was 13 when you said venture in one of the first years it was just like who is a strange child regulation wise kind of yes it's something that you know i as an investor think about a lot of them we worry about actually sometimes stifling innovation how do we think about creating a regulatory structure or regulation that actually allows for great innovation and to of let London blossom in the way that we think it can and the UK blossom.

7:27So the UK has historically got this right. We get the balance right between being supportive of innovation to harness all the benefits that it brings, but at the same time, making sure that we've got appropriate guardrails in place to protect people, businesses, society. It comes back all the way to the Enlightenment, to the Industrial Revolution. I think it's part of our DNA that we just instinctively know how to get that balance right. And we're going to do that again when it comes to AI. And I'm confident that we can help shape the global conversation on the guardrails that we need to put in place so that we get the incredible benefits of AI, whether it's in drug discovery, healthcare, education, public services, the economy.

8:05But at the same time, we're protecting ourselves against the obvious risks that it brings. And I'm excited to, as I said, bring together people, as you said, from academia, from the companies and policymakers together to have that conversation this autumn. You said about the conversation this autumn. Talk to me about that because we announced it last week. What's the conversation and how's it going down? So I think what I want to do is bring together all those people so that we can consider the risks and make sure we have a good joint understanding of what the different types of risks are, have a joint approach to safety and research and evaluation, and then also a conversation about what the right guardrails are that we need to put in place.

8:46Now, in that bucket about research and evaluation, I'm delighted the UK is already playing a leadership role here. Our new task force, AI task force, which we should talk about, is£100 million, which means that we're investing more in safety research for AI than any government anywhere in the world and doing so in a way that I think is agile. But also, we're working with the companies themselves, DeepMind, Anthropic, and OpenAI. I'm pleased that they've said that they will give early or priority access to the models so that we can develop the right type of evaluation and research safety. So I think that's a really positive step forward.

9:22And you need to know that AI task force, 100 million fund. Can you talk to me about that initiative? And also where the funding is actually going? Is it companies? Is it actually kind of AI safety? How do we think about the fact on deployment? I think the first thing is this task force is a bit different. I think it's reflective of how I approach these things. And the task force is a model on the vaccine task force. It's a little bit arm's length from government. It will be empowered to move at pace, to do things differently. And I think that's important because, as you know, probably better than most, right?

9:52We need to move at pace and someone, I want to find the right person to chair that task force, which we haven't announced yet, because that process is still going, who's empowered to do that. and they will make ultimately the decisions, to be honest, about what the best way to allocate the resources are. But a key part of it is going to be safety research. And it's important that governments develop the capability to do research evaluations, safety evaluations, auditing of these large language models. That's something that the companies themselves are already doing, by the way, and I think they will welcome that.

10:24And I want the UK not just to be their intellectual home of AI regulation, but also the geographic home. And so we're going to take a lead in that part. This is also the largest amount from any other nation though. Yes. And I think it is. When it comes to safety research, we will be investing more in this than anywhere else. I think it's critical that governments do because we're cognizant that AI, yes, incredible opportunities it's going to bring, but obviously it comes with risks as well. Governments need to be in the leading role for making sure we understand those risks. and that's what safety research will help us do and make sure that we can protect people against them and i don't see why the uk can't be a leader in that you know you look at the quality of our ai research base it's fantastic i completely agree i think one thing that's like crucial to maintaining that hopefully early need is just the talent and engineering minds that we have in the uk how do we think about creating educational infrastructure and institutions and maintaining them in a way that means we can lead the kind of ai race revolution whatever we want to call it i I think that's probably the most important thing, because we're in a perennial war for talent.

11:29Companies are, countries are. Businesses are. Yeah. That's the biggest problem. The biggest thing, any CEO I speak to, it's one of the ones I want to talk to me about, it's just getting access to talent. Right. So I guess there's two ways to think about it. One is, what are we doing here in the UK? Now, a few years ago, when I was chancellor, I was already talking about AI and talking about the benefits it could bring as a general purpose technology. And what I did was increase our funding for AI master's conversion courses. So this is for people who are coming from non-STEM backgrounds to develop master's level capability in AI competencies like data science.

12:03So we had to make sure that universities developed those courses. So I massively increased the funding for those and they're working out really well. And we also funded more scholarships because I wanted to make sure people from disadvantaged backgrounds had access to the same educational opportunities in AI. So we increased the number of scholarships as well. So that's all happening here domestically, which is great. But we've also got to win the international war for talent, as you said. And here I'm making sure that we have what I believe is the world's most competitive visa regime for highly skilled talent.

12:32So we've got a new innovator founder visa for people who want to come here and set up businesses. We've got a new scale up visa for companies that are scaling up so they can bring the talent that they want very easily. And then I created something that I'm particularly proud of called the high potential individual visa. That basically says if you graduate from a global top 50 university, you can speak English and you've got an amount to support yourself. Just come to the UK. You don't need to have a job. You can come here for a couple of years, figure out what you want to do, and then we'll need to put you on a proper visa.

12:59But we just think you're a talented person who can add to our country and we want to have a massive welcome open for business sign. That visa is something that I don't, very few if any other countries have. So you put all of that together and then we've got a special AI program that's deliberately targeting a hundred of the top global AI talents and trying to attract them here. I think that's a pretty compelling set of initiatives. It absolutely is. can i ask you a weird one which is you know you obviously have children if you were to advise someone coming out into the workforce today they would sit down with you and say what would you advise me or is she entering your workforce today in the uk so my kids are young and i'm gonna go i'm thinking i can plan and yeah no well actually i've got a kid so i'm gonna go i'm going back so before we even get to that point something i'm really passionate about is having more children study maths and one of my initiatives is to have maths be studied up to 80.

13:50we are a global outlier in allowing our children to stop studying maths at 60. And almost all developed countries have study of maths go all the way to 18 years old. You know, I think we need to look at that and we need to think about how we would do that too here. So because for any job, I think increasingly having an understanding of mathematical concepts is really important, even in the creative industries where you might think, gosh, that's got nothing to do with it. Look at all the jobs in the creative industries and post-production, and maths is an incredibly important part of it. But also just for participating in modern society and modern life, having strong financial literacy is important.

14:27It means you're less likely to be unemployed, that you can earn more and that you have a more fulfilling life. So I'm really passionate, even earlier. So my kids are 10 and 12 and they know that they're going to have to study maths all the way up to 18. Doesn't mean everyone has to do maths A-level, by the way, right? There's different forms of maths that will work for different people. I also think so much goes back to teaching. Most of the times it's like textbook, but I remember when I was younger, longer than now, but it was textbook-based and boy, that AI changed. That would sound well. I think probably there's lots of things to get excited about when it comes to AI.

14:56For me, the thing that I'm probably most excited about is education. Because I thought right at the beginning, your first question about what I learned from my parents and for me, the power of education to transform people's lives is unmatched. And if we can harness AI, A, to reduce the burden for teachers, whether it's marking, lesson planning, and make our best teachers even better by helping them that's great but also providing personalized individual learning for each pupil which we know is kind of almost the holy grail right tutoring is incredibly powerful but it's hard to do that with humans for the obvious cost of playing stage is incredibly hard yeah if you can have every child have essentially a personalized tutor imagine how incredible that would be for their development and growth and their future opportunities so that you know that's the area where i'm perhaps most excited i totally agree are you ready for a quick fire round always okay so you bring things i say a short statement you give me your immediate right okay let's start with you've got a day free on the weekend which admittedly is we're doing and i'm really sweet you're on a day free on the weekend how are you going to spend that day with my kids who uh i don't see enough uh i'd probably do breakfast with them i'm not massively into cooking but breakfast is one of the things i can do i cook breakfast uh what do you cook i do a cook breakfast and my scrambled eggs are important to me oh wow yeah do we have milk do we have butter no gosh no definitely butter no milk i'll use the gordon ramsay recommended way to do scrambled eggs which i i entered i interviewed him when i was chancellor as i was doing research for the interview and i came across he has this video which has been watched a gazillion times about how to cook scrambled eggs which is slightly counterintuitive to how most of us do it because doesn't have milk okay and then the high key anyway but so i'd recommend it i do that dog we have uh nova our labrador so dog walk time with the kids and i've got time to get my wife out for dinner at our favorite you know tapash restaurant in the evening that would be great but this is a very hypothetical day i haven't i haven't had that day in a very long time just a week it was a distant memory um you have a last meal this is very centered around food uh we took a few discovery now like you have a last meal what would you choose easy club sandwich fries and Mexican Coke.

17:07Let's go for, if you've got any concert, any performer, dead or alive. Gosh, let me think. Well, I missed all the Beyonce concerts this week, or this cast week in London. I did have a good time at the Correlation concert with my wife, which was a rare date night. Yours are a very good reason not to be. Yeah, that's true. Actually, you know, pull up, that reminds me, the first concert that my wife and I went to was incredibly special and I would love to go back and do it again. It was in 2005. obviously we weren't married at the time it was in 2005 i was in london it was a live eight concert in the park and i never win anything but you had to text message and then it was all done by lottery and i actually got i got tickets so her and i went to that concert and it literally was everybody everyone you can think of played at that concert you know you two paul mccann and you also get the best souls yeah literally it was the greatest hits from the greatest performers of all time all in one afternoon and the weather was great and i mean that was literally the most extraordinary concert and it was one of the you know as i said it was first concert that we went to together i think so i'd probably go back and redo redo that 2005 live eight concert smash of the day of concerts what's the best and what's the worst part of being pm the you know the best the best time i feel like i've had in this job is uh i'm a big cricket fan i got to play cricket in the garden down next street garden with some of the t20 uh side the england t20 side that's if you're a cricket fan you get to play cricket with your cricket heroes that's kind of a neat thing to do so that was a lot of fun in the garden um but probably on a more on a more serious level it's a little bit theme of our conversation i feel that certainly economically technologically we're at an incredibly important time in our country's development being prime minister at that time and being responsible for getting that right and making sure that we in the uk and what our families can really benefit from that is important and that's that's a kind of great privilege actually so that that's the exciting thing about being pm right now again the worst thing is is i touched on it before it's like many people's demanding jobs you know when when they take you away from your family particularly when you have young kids that's obviously that's obviously sad and like many parents working parents across the country and not being able to spend enough time with your kids is something that you are always sad about we actually had the aussie free captain pat cummins on the show which comes out tomorrow i think our team were trying to injure him at every point in his journey ah good yeah actually slightly i was watching uh bits of the um wild test championship over the last few days the um reasons for us to be hopeful but also and they were they were in quite good nick so it's gonna be fantastic but now someone what does the exercise routine look like exercise routine yeah i think i remember you asked me about this didn't you last time and it was Cody on uh yeah so it's still it still is that it's still Cody if I can manage one of those a week I am I'm happy and I've been trying to get back into running which I haven't done for ages but I try and also do a a run on the treadmill once a week which I've been able to do for the last month or so so I'm trying to get back into that sorry do you miss running outside I I'm not a big runner outside actually I just the treadmill yeah I'm not because I don't really like running.

20:15So the benefit of the treadmill is it is kind of forced to run, right? If I'm outside, you know, slow down, get bored and tired. So, but yeah, not enough exercise. It felt like for a long time, the most exercise I got was walking upstairs from my flat, downstairs to my office. And final one for you, what do you want your legacy to be? I think there's always have to be context specific. And for me, it's important that I restore people's trust in politics. And that means the way I go about this job is different. I want to change how politics is done. So people believe in their politicians, believe in their prime minister, believe in their government and believe that they're doing the right thing, but also genuinely able to make a difference to their lives.

20:56And I go on about these five priorities I have a lot to halve inflation, grow the economy, reduce debt, cut waiting lists and stop the boats. I'm laser focused on delivering those. I said to people, that's what I was going and do because I believe that's what they want me to do. Those are the country's priorities. And I want them ultimately to feel, you know, he said he was going to do these things and he worked hard at it, did it in the right way and made a difference to us. So, you know, it's obviously a work in progress and we've got a long way to go, but that's what I'm hard at doing. Listen, thank you so much for doing this.

21:24It's so fantastic to be able to have this conversation. And so I really appreciate it. No, it's great to spend some time with you. Thanks for coming in. Now, I have to say, I really could not be more excited for the future of tech in London and the UK. I want to say a huge thank you to Rishi for taking the time. A huge thank you to his team for making it happen. I hope you enjoyed the show today and I cannot wait to hear your thoughts. You can find the full episode on YouTube by searching for 20VC and you can also find us on 20VC.com. As always, we so appreciate all your support.