During her
outing to Davos, the Prime Minister called for international co-operation to
develop ethical rules for the use of technological breakthroughs in areas like
artificial intelligence. For once, I
agree with her. There are many issues on
which the sensible way forward is to reach an international agreement on a
common set of rules. It means of course
that not every country will get exactly what it wants out of that set of rules;
there will inevitably be compromises to be made.
Nevertheless, having
a single set of rules can work very well - up until the point where one country
decides to ‘take back control’, to coin a phrase, and demands the right to make
its own rules. And that’s the problem
that I have with her proposal: there’s something more than a little
disingenuous about a Prime Minister whose only significant policy is that her
country should have the absolute right to set its own rules jetting off to
Davos to tell an international gathering how important it is that they all
abide by a common set of rules. That
neither she nor her advisers spotted the incongruity shows how deeply ingrained
in their mind-set is the idea of British exceptionalism.
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