Ministers are facing calls for greater transparency about public data that may be shared with the US tech company OpenAI after the government signed a wide-ranging agreement with the 300m ( 222m) company that critics compared to letting a fox into a henhouse. Chi Onwurah, the chair of the House of Commons select committee on science, innovation and technology, warned that Monday's sweeping memorandum of understanding between OpenAI's chief executive, Sam Altman, and the technology secretary, Peter Kyle, was "very thin on detail" and called for guarantees that public data would remain in the UK and clarity about how much of it OpenAI would have access to. The deal paves the way for the Silicon Valley firm behind ChatGPT to explore deploying advanced AI technology in areas including justice, defence and security, and education. It includes OpenAI and the government "partnering to develop safeguards that protect the public and uphold democratic values". Kyle said he wanted Britain to be "front and centre when it comes to developing and deploying AI" and "this can't be achieved without companies like OpenAI".

Google has agreed a sweeping deal with the UK government to provide free technology to the public sector from the NHS to local councils– a move campaigners have called "dangerously naive". The US company will be asked to "upskill" tens of thousands of civil servants in technology, including in using artificial intelligence, as part of an agreement which will not require the government to pay. It is considered in Whitehall to be giving Google "a foot in the door" as the digitisation of public services accelerates. However, the agreement prompted concerns about the precariousness of UK public data being held on US servers amid the unpredictable leadership of Donald Trump. The Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) said Google Cloud, which provides databases, machine learning and computing power, had "agreed to work with the UK government in helping public services use advanced tech to shake off decades old'ball and chain' legacy contracts which leave essential services vulnerable to cyber-attack". Google's services are considered more agile and efficient than traditional competitors, but there are concerns in Whitehall's digital circles about the government becoming locked into a new kind of dependency.

All civil servants in England and Wales will get practical training in how to use artificial intelligence to speed up their work from this autumn, the Guardian has learned. More than 400,000 civil servants will be informed of the training on Monday afternoon, which is part of a drive by the chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, Pat McFadden, to overhaul the civil service and improve its productivity. At the same time, the size of the civil service is being reduced by tens of thousands of roles through voluntary redundancy and not replacing leavers. The government said officials would be tasked with figuring how they could use AI technology to streamline their own work wherever possible. Officials are already piloting a package of AI tools called Humphrey – named after the senior civil servant Sir Humphrey Appleby from the 1980s TV sitcom Yes, Minister.

Thousands of civil servants at the heart of the UK government, including those working directly to support Prime Minister Keir Starmer, are using a proprietary artificial intelligence chatbot to carry out their work, New Scientist can reveal. Officials have refused to disclose on the record exactly how the tool is being used, whether the prime minister is receiving advice that has been prepared using AI or how civil servants are mitigating the risks of inaccurate or biased AI outputs. Experts say the lack of disclosure raises concerns about government transparency and the accuracy of information being used in government. After securing the world-first release of ChatGPT logs under freedom of information (FOI) legislation, New Scientist asked 20 government departments for records of their interactions with Redbox, a generative AI tool developed in house and trialled among UK government staff. The large language model-powered chatbot allows users to interrogate government documents and to "generate first drafts of briefings", according to one of the people behind its development.

AI should replace the work of government officials where it can be done to the same standard, under new rules that have prompted unions to warn Keir Starmer to stop blaming problems on civil servants. As part of his plans for reshaping the state, the prime minister will on Thursday outline how a digital revolution will bring billions of pounds in savings to the government. Officials will be told to abide by a mantra that says: "No person's substantive time should be spent on a task where digital or AI can do it better, quicker and to the same high quality and standard." In his speech, Starmer will claim that more than 45bn can be saved by greater use of digital methods in Whitehall, even before AI is deployed, with 2,000 new tech apprentices to be recruited to the civil service. However, with bruising cuts on the way at this spring's spending review, Dave Penman, the general secretary of the FDA union for senior civil servants, said: "Mantras that look like they've been written by ChatGPT are fine for setting out a mission, but spending rounds are about reality."

Donald Trump and Elon Musk's chaotic approach to reform is upending government operations. Critical functions have been halted, tens of thousands of federal staffers are being encouraged to resign, and congressional mandates are being disregarded. The next phase: The Department of Government Efficiency reportedly wants to use AI to cut costs. According to The Washington Post, Musk's group has started to run sensitive data from government systems through AI programs to analyze spending and determine what could be pruned. This may lead to the elimination of human jobs in favor of automation.

A new artificial intelligence tool can warn ministers whether policies are likely to be very unpopular with their party's MPs, using a search described as a "parliamentary vibe check". Parlex is one of a suite of AI tools being developed for ministers and civil servants which allows them to predict which topics might cause them difficulty with their own backbenchers – and pinpoint specific MPs who feel passionately about a given subject. A summary of a policy – such as a 20mph speed limit – can be given to the tool which then predicts how MPs are likely to react, according to their previous contributions in parliament. A demonstration video on the government's website shows how Tory MPs have historically opposed the change and the Labour MPs in favour of traffic calming measures. The Parlex tool's description says it "allows policy teams to understand the political climate and anticipate potential challenges or support for a policy before it is formally proposed and to build a parliamentary handling strategy". Parlex, which is at the early stages of development, describes this as a "vibe check".

An artificial intelligence tool hosted by Amazon and designed to boost UK Ministry of Defence recruitment puts defence personnel at risk of being identified publicly, according to a government assessment. Data used in the automated system to improve the drafting of defence job adverts and attract more diverse candidates by improving the inclusiveness language, includes names, roles and emails of military personnel and is stored by Amazon in the US. This means "a data breach may have concerning consequences, ie identification of defence personnel", according to documents detailing government AI systems published for the first time today. The risk has been judged to be "low" and the MoD said "robust safeguards" have been put in place by the suppliers, Textio, Amazon Web Services and Amazon GuardDuty, a threat detection service. But it is one of several risks acknowledged by the government about its use of AI tools in the public sector in a tranche of documents released to improve transparency about the central government's use of algorithms. Official declarations about how the algorithms work stress that mitigations and safeguards are in place to tackle risks, as ministers push to use AI to boost UK economic productivity and, in the words of the technology secretary, Peter Kyle, on Tuesday, "bring public services back from the brink".

In a cramped conference room in Bristol, Ilan Gur is trying to convince a group of plant biologists that they can change the world. The 44-year-old has the patter you'd expect from a Californian startup founder, but he's also one of the UK's most senior civil servants, so what comes next is unexpected. Close your eyes, he asks the scientists, and imagine pushing past the very edges of your research. The attendees take a beat, shifting slightly on their uncomfortable chairs. Positive visualization is not quite what they had expected from a workshop introducing them to the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA), the UK government's new high-risk, high-reward science funding agency.

Artificial intelligence (AI) could take over more than eight in 10 repetitive jobs performed by civil servants, a study has found. From processing passports to registering to vote, at least 120 million tasks across government have the potential to be automated. Every minute AI helped cut per transaction would save hundreds of thousands of hours of manual work by human staff. The Alan Turing Institute, which carried out the research, said it would free up officials from never-ending bureaucracy and spend more time dealing with the public. Last month, the Deputy Prime Minister promised AI would end'timewasting, pencil-pushing, computer-saysno' frustrations of dealing with public services.