snip.
← Back to Home ID: 2813
Chi Onwurah @chionwurah.bsky.social
Jul 3, 08:40 PM

I spoke on Times Radio about UK's changing relationship with Big Tech. My Science, Innovation and Technology Committee found three key risks: dependence on a few US tech firms, vendor lock-in and public trust. Palantir NHS contract raises serious questions on all three!

🎤 Whisper Transcript (en) ⏱ 116s

"Can you sense a change coming with Prime Minister Burnham in the UK's relationship with tech and big tech companies? To be honest, there has been a change in the relationship over the past few months, and particularly since the concerns over the Trump administration's relationship with NATO and with the UK, but also particularly in the last few weeks since the Trump administration initially banned all foreign companies and foreign governments from using the most powerful AI models. And I haven't spoken to Andy Burnham specifically on this, but my committee, the Science, Innovation, and Tech Select Committee, did a big inquiry into the digitalization of the state as part of the government's ambition to bring forward efficiencies, and also the NHS in particular going from analog to digital. And we identified real barriers in that very laudable ambition, and one of them was a dependency on a very small number of US tech firms. Another was vendor lock-in, and a third was public trust. And if you like, and I think part of the issue here with the Palantir NHS contract is that that's sort of like the poster boy for all three of those issues, because it's a US tech company where they're actually saying that we're locked into them already effectively, and there's low public trust. And I think some of that is applicable to other US tech companies as well. I think that's really interesting. And the other part of this is perhaps the struggle that politicians have with wrestling with those things that you've identified. And I wonder if Lisa Nandy actually personifies that for us. She says, a platform originally designed for free speech and expression now favors abuse and misinformation over meaningful debate."

💬 Discussion

Chi Onwurah @chionwurah.bsky.social · Jul 3, 04:03 PM

I spoke on Times Radio about UK's changing relationship with Big Tech. My Science, Innovation and Technology Committee found three key risks: dependence on a few US tech firms, vendor lock-in and public trust. Palantir NHS contract raises serious questions on all three!