Good morning. Is it worth a 100-mile train ride from London to England’s second city, Birmingham, to hear the former U.K. prime minister talk about the AI revolution? Despite my original train being cancelled (this is Britain) and a mad dash from the main Birmingham rail station to the venue to be there in time (through a hail storm)—it turns out, yes.
Rishi Sunak was prime minister from 2022 until 2024—when he was defeated by Keir Starmer. Although they come from different parties (Sunak is a Conservative, Starmer leads the Labour Party), they are surprisingly close on the issue of AI development (more and faster, please). The U.K. business department regularly contacts Sunak to ask for advice.
Sunak is considered an expert on technology and is U.S.-friendly, which is key to creating AI momentum in Europe. He has an MBA from Stanford and is an advisor to Goldman Sachs, Microsoft and Anthropic.
In front of an audience of hundreds of smaller business leaders, Sunak laid out some golden rules for AI application:
- Don’t think of the technology first, think about what your business needs.
- Make decisions at speed or risk being left on the wrong side of a “K-shaped” economy (AI adopters on the up, laggards drifting backwards).
- Pilot and iterate—rather than try and boil the whole ocean in one go.
I heard fascinating insights from the business leaders in the audience about how they are approaching AI. One founder talked of the “false confidence” risk engendered by AI products like Gemini, Claude and Perplexity. Each give slick, plausible answers in the blink of an eye to any question you ask. Which answers, though, are worth your time?
To understand that, you need a strong understanding of your business and its value to your customers. It may be a new AI approach. Or it may be something that is very human in nature.
Sunak was soundly defeated in 2024, and Starmer came in on a wave of hope that Britain could redefine its role in the world. But the polls have turned against Labour, the U.S. president has described him as “no Churchill,” and now neither the Conservatives nor Labour lead in the polls (Nigel Farage of Reform does).
But there is brain power in the U.K. in AI. Nscale, a builder of data centers, is valued at $14.6 billion. Revolut, in financial services, is valued at $75 billion. Sunak wants AI thinking to flourish on this side of the Atlantic and argues that smaller businesses, which employ most people, will lead many of the advances. They are more nimble and quicker than big bureaucracies, he argues. He also hopes that in this one aspect, at least, the U.K. can show the U.S. a thing or two.
If only the trains could run on time. — Kamal Ahmed
Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com
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CEO Daily is curated and edited by Joey Abrams, Claire Zillman and Lee Clifford.
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