The Public Doesn’t Trust AI. Rishi Sunak Doesn’t Understand Why.
You can’t dismiss safeguards as a nuisance and then act surprised when people don’t feel safe.
Writing in The Economist this July, Rishi Sunak made a telling argument. He warns that too much regulation could block the UK from embedding AI across every part of society, and then, mere sentences later, wonders why the public doesn’t trust the technology.
It is an interesting contradiction. Arguing against checks and balances, while simultaneously lamenting a lack of public confidence.
Mr Sunak is not wrong about the public distrust in AI. One report shows trust in AI agents in the UK fell from 50% to just 32% in a single year. Another YouGov poll found that only 21% of Britons view AI as a force for good. People aren’t anti-technology, but they’re sceptical of Big Tech companies.
And can you blame them?
British politicians have an emerging track record of putting Big Tech before their constituents. From increasing levels of lobbying, to opaque partnerships with firms like OpenAI. The public is right to suspect that Silicon Valley is whispering louder in ministers’ ears than ordinary citizens are.
Take the government’s approach to copyright and AI. Despite mounting concerns from artists, authors, and rights groups about how their work is being used to train large language models, ministers continue to delay any serious regulation. Instead, they’re advancing a system where creators must opt out of having their content scraped. The creative sector which was worth an estimated £124 billion in Gross Value Added (GVA) to the UK in 2024, is understandably livid.
Then there is a broader issue; a dearth of technical leadership within government. The public have played witness to decades of bungled digital initiatives. The failed £35 million Test and Trace system. The 20 billion spent on the NHS IT systems. And of course, the Post Office Horizon scandal. A national disgrace that saw hundreds wrongly prosecuted because of blind faith in a faulty computer system.
It is hard to see what could go right, when we automate this level of systematic incompetence.
The irony is staggering. An ex-Prime minister complaining that the public doesn’t trust AI, yet offering no evidence that they understand the technology, no real safeguards for how it will be used, and no credible plan to ensure it’s deployed ethically and safely.
AI has the potential to be extraordinary technology. It has the power to transform the world for good. But with poor leadership and a lack of oversight, it also has the capacity to (and already is) automating many of society’s deepest injustices.
If you want to get the public on board, stop treating them like fools, and start treating them like the people who will carry the consequences of inevitably poor governmental decisions.
"Trust us, it will be fine" is not leadership. It’s abdication.
And if the British government continues to confuse cheerleading with oversight, public distrust won’t just persist; it will be well deserved.
