'Late in the game': Sunak and Starmer in policy scramble as AI surges ahead

Rishi Sunak will set out his views on artificial intelligence (AI) next week to an audience of technology industry insiders during a keynote speech at London Tech Week. Twenty-four hours later, the Labour leader Keir Starmer will do the same. The prime minister and Starmer have a habit of speaking at the same venue within a day of each other – they did so at the beginning of the year when setting out their competing visions for the country from the same room at the Olympic Park in east London. The fact they are doing so again but on the far more technical and detailed question of AI shows how quickly the issue has rocketed up the political agenda. "We have been working on AI policy for a long time," said one government official.