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

Rishi Sunak is the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He was previously appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer from 13 February 2020 to 5 July 2022. He was Chief Secretary to the Treasury from 24 July 2019 to 13 February 2020, and Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government from 9 January 2018 to 24 July 2019. Before entering the world of politics, Rishi co-founded an investment firm. In Today's Episode with Rishi Sunak We Discuss: 1. The United Kingdom: Open for AI: Open for Business Why does Rishi believe the UK is best placed to lead the way for innovation in AI? What can the government do to ensure the public and private sectors work together most efficiently? Why has Rishi created an entirely new division just for this? How does this change how decisions for AI and technology are made? 2. $100M Funding: The Largest Government Funding in the World: Why did Rishi decide to allocate the largest pool of capital of any nation toward AI safety? What is the strategy for the $100M? How will it be invested? Who will manage it? What are the challenges and opportunities in setting up this $100M funding program? 3. Education: Attracting the Best in the World: What has Rishi done to ensure the best talent in the world, wants to and can work in the UK? What new initiative has Rishi put in place to ensure the world's brightest students can freely move to and work in the UK? What can be done to ensure the UK continues to foster the same level of homegrown talent that we always have done? What can we do to improve our current education system for AI even further? Why does Rishi believe one of the greatest opportunities for AI lies in education and teaching? 4. Making Regulation Work Effectively: How does Rishi think about creating regulation which is both effective and not prohibitive? What can we do to create a government that moves at the speed of business? What does Rishi believe are the biggest mistakes made in regulatory provisions? What are we doing to avoid them with AI in the UK?

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  It'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, it has a hundred million pounds, which means that we're investing more in safety research for AI than any government anywhere in the world.

• 0:23Harry Stebbings?

  This is 20 VC with me, Harry Stebbings. I'm going to Downing Street and sitting down with our Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, for this discussion. Honestly, it was one of the greatest honours that I've had since starting 20 VC, over eight years and 3,000 episodes ago. I want to say 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.

• 0:55Speaker 02

  You have now arrived at your destination.

• 0:58Harry Stebbings?

  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.

• 1:05Speaker 00

  No, it's great. It's great to see you. Welcome to Downing.

• 1:07Harry Stebbings?

  It is lovely to finally meet. I want to start there. 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?

• 1:17Speaker 00

  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. So 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 accounts. So I saw what it took to run a small business, the trials and 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.

• 1:59Speaker 00

  It'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 believed that was the best way you could help with 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.

• 2:22Harry Stebbings?

  Can we ask you a bizarre question? Yeah, I know I'm not meant to go off script. When you become PM, do you call your mother and your...

• 2:29Speaker 00

  You know, gosh, on the day, I'm trying to remember, actually, I don't know if I did. I actually, I was just thinking, I'll remember if I did, I was so busy that day. I'm very close to them, you know, I saw them, actually, I saw them, I saw them yesterday. As it turned out, they 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 me at the football match, which was important to her.

• 3:12Speaker 00

  And 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 Burfi, which she was very happy to. Yeah, she was thrilled thrilled by that. So, yeah.

• 3:26Harry Stebbings?

  Now, obviously, it's London Tech Week, I want to dive straight in. Actually, when we think about kind of collaboration and working together respectfully, like, I think there's a big chasm between like private sector and knowledge. And then, you know, public sector and regulation, how do we think about working together most effectively between these two, not as all opposing, but just different?

• 3:43Speaker 00

  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. Yeah, I 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, our country. Because that's how we're going to drive growth and create jobs for people.

• 4:25Speaker 00

  And government needs to be understanding what do we need to put in place to make sure that that is successful.

• 4:30Harry Stebbings?

  I totally agree with you. How do you think about measure of success of what we do and how we work together?

• 4:36Speaker 00

  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, I 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? The traditional things, you know, 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.

• 5:14Speaker 00

  Are the next exciting technologies all happening here, whether that's quantum, engineering, biology, AI, fintech? I 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 incredible announcement today, Andreessen Horowitz, you know, 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 the 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.

• 5:57Harry Stebbings?

  How much do you think success contributes? I know that sounds a strange one, but like when you start the Andreessen, it's kind of like dominoes falling.

• 6:04Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 6:05Harry Stebbings?

  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'd be like, oh, wow, is it the next Miami? And are we seeing this like incredible rise again at London?

• 6:20Speaker 00

  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. Andreessen 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, forefront of electricity. And we mechanized textiles, you know, how we Build modern roads, the process for making steel, the lawnmower saying was another thing. I mean, you name 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.

• 7:02Harry Stebbings?

  I remember I first fell in love with venture when I was 13. When you said venture in London 13 years ago, it was just like, who is this strange child?

• 7:11Harry Stebbings?

  Regulation wise, kind of.

• 7:12Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 7:12Harry Stebbings?

  It's something that, you know, I as an investor think about a lot and 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 let London blossom in the way that we think it can and the UK blossom.

• 7:27Speaker 00

  So 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 goes 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. But at the same time, we're protecting ourselves against the obvious risks that it brings.

• 8:10Speaker 00

  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 sort of.

• 8:19Harry Stebbings?

  You said about the conversation that's often. Talk to me about that because we announced it last week, I think.

• 8:23Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 8:23Harry Stebbings?

  What was the conversation and how's it going down?

• 8:26Speaker 00

  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. Now, 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 a hundred million pounds, which means that we're investing more. In safety research for AI than any government anywhere in the world and doing it in a way that I think is agile. But also the we're working with the companies themselves, Deep My and Anthropic and OpenAI.

• 9:10Speaker 00

  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.

• 9:22Harry Stebbings?

  And you need to be up there, AI task force, hundred million fund. Can you talk to me about that initiative? And also where the funding is actually going? Is it companies? Is it to actually kind of AI safety? How do we think about the fact of deployment?

• 9:35Speaker 00

  So I think the first thing is this 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 arms 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? We 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.

• 10:20Speaker 00

  That's something that the companies themselves are already doing, by the way, and I think they will welcome that. And I want the the UK not just to be the intellectual home of AI big nation, but also the geographic home. And as I said, we're going to take a lead in that part.

• 10:32Harry Stebbings?

  This is also the largest moment from any other nation, though.

• 10:35Speaker 00

  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 a critical that governments do because we're cognizant that AI, yes, it 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 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.

• 11:07Harry Stebbings?

  I completely agree. I think one thing It's like crucial to maintaining that. Hopefully early in the year 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.

• 11:24Speaker 00

  I think, you know, that's probably the most important thing because we're in a perennial war for talent, companies are, countries are.

• 11:30Harry Stebbings?

  Businesses are.

• 11:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's the biggest problem. The biggest thing, any CEO I speak to is, you know, what I want to talk to me about, it's just getting access to talent, right? So there's, 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 was 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 masters conversion courses. So this is for people who are coming from non-stem backgrounds to develop masters level capability in AI competencies like data science. So and to make sure that universities developed those courses. So I massively increased the funding for those and they're working out really well.

• 12:10Speaker 00

  And we also funded more scholarships because I wanted to make sure people from disadvantaged backgrounds had access to these 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, I'm making sure that we have what I believe is the world's most competitive visa regime for highly skilled talent. So 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.

• 12:53Speaker 00

  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. But 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, you know, very few of 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.

• 13:21Harry Stebbings?

  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, Rashid? Entering your workforce today in the UK.

• 13:34Speaker 00

  So my kids are young and I'm thinking I can plan and yeah, no, well, actually I'm gonna go back. So before we even get to that point, something that I'm really passionate about is having more children study maths. And one of my initiatives is to have maths be studied up to eighteen. We are a global outlier in allowing our children to stop studying maths at sixteen. And almost all developed countries have study of maths go all the way to eighteen 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.

• 14:15Speaker 00

  Look at all the jobs in the creative industries and post-production 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. It 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 ten and twelve and they know that they're gonna have to study maths all the way up to eighteen. 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.

• 14:42Harry Stebbings?

  I also think so much goes back to teaching. Most of the times it's like textbook, but I remember when I was younger, they're going out, but it was like textbook based and boy.

• 14:50Speaker 00

  And that.

• 14:50Harry Stebbings?

  AI changed.

• 14:51Speaker 00

  That's probably the, you know, there's lots of things to get excited about when it comes to AI. For me, the thing that I'm probably most excited about is education. Cause I thought right at the beginning, your first question about what my love for my parents and for me, you know, 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.

• 15:31Harry Stebbings?

  It's incredibly hard.

• 15:32Speaker 00

  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 was. Perhaps most excited.

• 15:46Harry Stebbings?

  I totally agree. Are you ready for a quick fire round?

• 15:48Speaker 00

  Always.

• 15:49Harry Stebbings?

  Okay, so you bring things. I say a short statement, you give me your immediate.

• 15:52Speaker 00

  Right, okay.

• 15:53Harry Stebbings?

  Let's start with, you've got a day free on the weekend, which admittedly is weird. And I'm really, you're on a day free on the weekend. How are you going to spend that day?

• 16:01Speaker 00

  With my kids, who I don't see enough. I probably do breakfast with them. I'm not massively into cooking, but breakfast is one of the things I can do. I do cook breakfast.

• 16:12Harry Stebbings?

  What do you cook?

• 16:13Speaker 00

  I do cook breakfast and scrambled eggs are important to me.

• 16:17Harry Stebbings?

  Oh, wow. Do we have milk? Do we have butter?

• 16:19Speaker 00

  No, gosh, no. Definitely butter, no milk. I use the Gordon Ramsay recommended way to do scrambled eggs, which I interviewed him when I was Chancellor, as I was doing research for the interview and it 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 it doesn't have milk.

• 16:37Harry Stebbings?

  Okay.

• 16:38Speaker 00

  And it's a high key. Anyway, but so I'd recommend it. I do that. Dog, we have a Nova, our Labrador, so dog walk, time with the kids. And if I've got time to let my wife out for dinner at our favourite Tapas restaurant in the evening, that would be great. But this is a very hypothetical day. I haven't had that day in a very long time, just a week.

• 16:56Harry Stebbings?

  It was a distant memory. You have a last meal. This is very central around food. We took the food discovery network. You have a last meal. What would you choose?

• 17:04Speaker 00

  Easy, club sandwich, fries and Mexican coke.

• 17:07Harry Stebbings?

  Let's go for, if you've heard of any concert, any performer that are alive.

• 17:11Speaker 00

  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.

• 17:21Harry Stebbings?

  Yours are a very good reason not to be.

• 17:23Speaker 00

  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. It was in London. It was a Live Aid 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. Best songs. 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, I said it was first concert that we went to together, I think.

• 18:08Speaker 00

  So I'd probably go back and redo redo that 2005 Live Eight concert. It's a massive day of concerts. If 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 bit cricket fan. I got to play cricket in the garden, Downing Street garden with some of the T20 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. But probably on a more, on a more serious level, it did 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.

• 18:51Speaker 00

  Being Prime Minister at that time and being responsible for getting that right and making sure that we in the UK and all 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, you 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, not being able to spend enough time with your kids is, is something that you are always sad about. We actually had the Aussie cricket captain Pat Cummins on the show, which comes up tomorrow. I think our team were trying to injure him at every point in his journey. Ah, good. Yeah, actually slightly, I was watching bits of the World Test Championship over the last few days.

• 19:34Speaker 00

  The reasons for us to be hopeful, but also, and they were, they were in quite good nick. So it's going to be fantastic. Penas one one, what does the exercise routine look like? Exercise routine? I think I remember you asked me about this, didn't you, last time? And it was Cody on. 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. But I've been able to do for the last. Month or so, so I'm trying to get back into that.

• 20:07Harry Stebbings?

  Sorry, do you miss running outside?

• 20:08Speaker 00

  I I I'm not a big runner outside, actually. I just.

• 20:11Harry Stebbings?

  The treadmill.

• 20:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm not because I don't really like running. The benefit of the treadmill is that you're just 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.

• 20:29Harry Stebbings?

  And that was. The break. I'm on. Yeah. And final one for you. What do you want your legacy to be?

• 20:34Speaker 00

  I think it always has 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. And 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 to 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,

• 21:16Speaker 00

  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 harder doing.

• 21:23Harry Stebbings?

  Listen, thank you so much for doing this. It's so fantastic to be able to have this conversation and so I really appreciate it.

• 21:28Speaker 00

  No, it's great to spend some time with you. Thanks for coming in.

• 21:32Harry Stebbings?

  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 20 VC. And you can also find us on 20vc.com. As always, we so appreciate all your support.