While there’s no requirement to do so we are trying to be as transparent as possible, so in response to ( another! ) FOI @UKSovereignAI added my conflicts of interest process to the site today along with others, for those interested. I hoped we’d put this all up earlier - but sadly I am not the webmaster or else there’d be a lot more gifs.
As a small insight into how difficult it is to do things in Govt, there hasn’t been a SINGLE WEEK since our launch where team members haven’t had to spend hours responding to an FOI request, for things like ‘where are your investment companies based’ ( you can use Google! ) or ‘what copyright laws does a chip company breach’ ( as nonsensical as asking what fruit and veg laws a fighter jet breaches ).
I understand that many FOI requests are now AI generated. But as the civil service isn’t allowed to use AI in the same way to respond to them, the abuse of this system is rife. There was a great piece in the Economist on this asymmetry choking parts of the state recently.
It’s a significant cost of both our small team’s time and tax payers money. So I’m hoping that by releasing more publicly, even if delayed, it will reduce that burden on them.
Thankfully, SovAI has a killer team who work around the clock anyway - more to come on how they’re working to strengthen the UK’s AI capabilities and economy next week.
