SIX MPs take artificial intelligence (AI) challenges so seriously that they gave up a day and night to take part in the “AI parliamentary scheme,” according to the latest register of MPs’ interests.

In April, the MPs went to Ditchley Park, the elegant 18th century country house in Oxfordshire which hosts upmarket political conferences, especially those promoting Anglo-US relations.

The MPs were given overnight accommodation, hospitality and travel, valued at £400 to £600 each, so they could develop “effective scrutiny” of AI, including “possible opportunities, potential risks, and implications for our society.” The event was organised by think tank Demos, but funded by … leading AI firm Google.

MPs scrutinising AI need to ask if AI needs heavier regulation; consider if AI is just the latest tech industry snake-oil to push up Silicon Valley share prices; if AI is promising a magic bullet for public-sector reform but delivering unpredictable slop; or whether AI embeds existing prejudices and errors in uncontrollable automatic processes.

But I don’t believe a Google-funded scheme will do this. Google is already misusing AI: Google’s search engine is a very powerful and effective index of the world wide web. However, its indexes only help people find information on websites — we still must judge whether that information is accurate or the individual websites are trustworthy.

Instead of making this clear, Google has added an AI “assistant” that “summarises” information implied by searches ahead of the results. This AI does not — because it cannot — decide whether that information is true. The warning that these “AI responses may include mistakes” is tucked away in the small print. Google is using AI to overpromote its main product, to pretend it is something it is not.

Things get worse. Google used to have an “ethical” policy promising not to use AI for “weapons or other technologies whose principal purpose … is to cause … injury to people,” or “technologies that gather or use information for surveillance violating internationally accepted norms.” In a sinister development, Google erased these promises in February. It is not a good partner for MPs to investigate AI.

Demos said all 650 MPs were invited to join its Google-backed “AI parliamentary scheme,” but most attendees at this first event — shadow work and pensions secretary Helen Whately, veteran MPs David Davis and John Whittingdale, Bromley MP Peter Fortune and Hampshire MP Damian Hinds — were Conservatives.

They were joined by an obscure Labour backbencher, Airdrie MP Kenneth Stevenson. In January, the better-known Labour-left MP Dawn Butler announced she was sponsoring Demos and Google’s AI parliamentary scheme, although she did not go to the Ditchley Park event.

This is a surprising choice given Butler’s previous complaints that AI risks “automating discrimination” along with other “huge risks” if regulation ends up letting AI “off the leash.” Butler claimed 30 MPs were joining Google’s parliamentary scheme, so the firm’s influence will likely expand beyond this initial event.

The NHS is already sick of Palantir

LOTS of us object to the NHS paying US tech firm Palantir £182 million for its patient data software. We don’t trust Palantir because it seems like a sinister company, run by a Trump supporter who hates the NHS.

Now it turns out hospitals don’t seem to like Palantir’s NHS data system either, and the NHS is having to pay another consultancy, KPMG, another £13m to run what it calls “tiger teams,” to persuade hospitals to swallow Palantir’s role.

Palantir was awarded the £182m, four-year contract to run its Foundry patient data system for the NHS in November 2023.

Palantir relies heavily on its political contacts. Personally, I think relying on hiring a lot of “political insiders” to sell a product is a big sign that the product isn’t that great. Before winning the contract, Palantir hired a lobbying company, Global Counsel, founded and at the time run, by Peter Mandelson.

Mandelson is very much a political “insider,” a former Labour minister who is equally comfortable with Tory ministers. Freedom of information documents show Global Counsel was able to arrange dinners for Palantir with the chairman of NHS England and other top NHS staff in 2019, shortly before the firm won its first NHS contracts in 2020.

Palantir is still a Global Counsel client — Mandelson has gone on to become the British ambassador to Washington. Since last October, Palantir has hired a second British lobbying firm, called Lodestone Communications. Lodestone, in turn, has hired Tom Watson, the former deputy leader of the Labour Party, who is admired by the current Labour government for his work opposing and undermining Labour’s move left under Jeremy Corbyn.

Palantir’s enthusiasm for hiring “political insiders” raises suspicions, but it is the politics of its founder and chairman, Peter Thiel, which raises most worries. Thiel is a notable supporter of Donald Trump.

Thiel is a “free-market fundamentalist” who told the Oxford Union in January 2023 that the British commitment to the NHS was “Stockholm syndrome” and that “the NHS makes people sick” because free healthcare creates dependency. For these reasons, Thiel’s firm should be nowhere near the NHS.

But now it turns out Palantir should also not be near the NHS because individual NHS hospitals and NHS trusts don’t really like its Foundry software. The NHS is having to pay KPMG another £13m for a one-year contract, announced in May, to encourage those hospitals to use Palantir’s software.

The contract is for KPMG to make a “support offer” to hospitals to accept Palantir’s “front line digitisation.” The NHS says it wants KPMG to “create an experienced, multi-skilled, rapid-response intervention service also known as a tiger teams service” to support and encourage Palantir’s “electronic patient record” system being used across England.

Before the election, Rachel Reeves promised to cut wasteful outsourcing to management consultants. Now she is hiring a bunch of management consultants to pretend to be “tigers” — grrrr — in an attempt to push software from a Trump-supporting, anti-NHS “tech bro” onto the health service.

Follow Solomon Hughes on X @SolHughesWriter.