ASI Bulletin: From A(I) to Z(ahawi)
Dr. Eamonn Butler, our Director and Co-Founder, takes you through the last few (always busy) weeks at the Adam Smith Institute.
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In this bulletin:
Adam Smith Institute at the movies!
A debt-free solution to the housing crisis
How to keep AI safe
But first...
It’s that time again, and pumpkins are in the news, causing traffic chaos, apparently. The UK’s biggest pumpkin, coming in at 2,565 lbs (How do they even weigh that?—Ed.), fell off its trailer while being transported to a national pumpkin festival, but sustained only ‘minor bruising’ and made it to the prize. Unlike Germany’s heaviest pumpkin, which was held up in a traffic jam (In Germany?? I thought those guys were efficient—Ed.) so never made it to the competition where it would have been declared the winner.
Also on transport issues, the government announcement, that the money being saved on HS2 would provide a few extra buses in Birmingham, was greeted with predictable scorn. (Perhaps the money would be better spent transporting Tory voters to the polls, which they seem very reluctant to visit.)
And Whitehall, it seems, is using AI to decide everything from who gets benefits to whose marriage licence is approved, something even the Guardian admitted was a ‘haphazard’ use of the technology. (Mind you, I think Whitehall must have been using artificial intelligence for decades, as their decisions have long seemed to lack the real thing.)
But I digress...
REPORTS
Homes for All: A Debt Free Solution to the Housing Crisis
The UK is desperately short of housing, particularly in and near large cities, which is why housing has become unaffordable to so many. To fix it, the government (we say) should use compulsory purchase orders to buy metropolitan green belt land. But this is not just a land grab—tradable shares would be issued to landowners, local residents, and other interested parties, ensuring a local buy-in for the development we need.
No fewer than three former cabinet ministers commented publicly in support of our housing proposals mentioned above (Sir Brandon Lewis, Sir Jake Berry and Sir Robert Buckland). Sir Brandon even did an op-ed about it that you can read in the Telegraph.
Tipping point: On the Edge of Superintelligence
In this new report, the superintelligent Connor Axiotes and Eddie Bolland make the case for forward thinking when it comes to artificial superintelligence, recommending we spur innovation, research, and investment into AI companies, whilst managing the risks associated with this new technology. They recommend building a market-based British Compute Reserve, creating an international agency for AI and adopting a pro-AI government procurement policy.
And the Telegraph must have liked that one too- here’s their write-up and an accompanying op-ed by Sir Brandon Lewis.
EVENTS
ASI at the movies!
We’re hosting a cinema premiere with our friends from the Ayn Rand Center Europe of the classic 1942 movie We the Living, directed by Goffredo Alessandrini, now happening in December! It’s based on the 1936 political love-triangle novel by Ayn Rand and stars nobody you’ve ever heard of, but it should be a fun evening in an old-school cinema and post-screening cocktails. Venue and date to be confirmed, but please register your interest here. There will be an exclusive introduction from the distributor of the remastered version, Duncan Scott, about his experience of working with Rand herself. Not one to miss.
Ex-White House guru at ASI
On 16th November, we're hosting an exclusive talk and Q & A with Mick Mulvaney, the former White House Chief of Staff. He will discuss the forthcoming US election and the state of the Republican Party. (Tissues will be provided for Republicans of a nervous disposition.) Spaces are limited so better apply fast for a ticket via the ballot here. Deadline: 8th November.
The Next Generation
Our regular gathering of young (well, under 33.33) policy movers and shakers takes place again a little later next month, on Tuesday 14th November. Ten-minute speaker TBC, but as always, it’ll be good ‘un.
Freedom’s Fighters
Darn, you missed it—the return of our popular series Freedom’s Fighters in which our very own Dr Madsen Pirie interviews prominent people about their ideas, upbringing, tastes, fears and hopes. This week it was Nadhim Zahawi MP, who came to the UK aged 11, unable to speak English, and rose to become a cabinet minister. It will appear on Youtube soon, and you can follow the events page & our social media to find out when the next one is.
Darn, you missed this too ….
Priced Out Manifesto Launch
The Adam Smith Institute was delighted to host all of Britain’s Biggest YIMBYs at the Priced Out Manifesto Launch on Tuesday. Joined by our Patron The Rt. Hon Brandon Lewis CBE MP, Sir Simon Clarke MP and Andrew Western MP, a genuine cross-party consensus to envision a ‘golden age of house building’ was cheered for.
ASI’s Maxwell Marlow even pointed out that if food prices had risen at the same rate as housing costs since 1971, a chicken would now cost a whopping £82. Food for thought.
But don’t worry- the event and Simon Clarke’s speech was written up in the Sun, The Times and in the Express.
OUT AND ABOUT
Party conferences
Our team had a very successful party conference season- from hosting a private drinks reception with the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care and our own panel at Labour, to appearing on a variety of external panels. You can watch our Director of Research Maxwell Marlow talking about immigration here, and our Director of Communications Emily Fielder discussing whether the Conservative Party has given up on success here.
Our responses to the leaders’ speeches also got plenty of coverage from a broad spectrum of outlets- we appeared in the Telegraph, the Times, Politics Home, Bloomberg, the Yorkshire Post, the Daily Mail, the National, the Independent, Guido Fawkes, and on BBC Radio 4. Our Patron Nadhim Zahawi MP also highlighted our calls to scrap inheritance tax on Sky News’ Politics Hub with Sophy Ridge, and on GB News with Nigel Farage.
Elsewhere…
I’m joining an international panel that the Croatian think tank Centre for Public Policy and Economic Analysis(CEA) and the Zagreb School of Economics and Management (ZŠEM) are organising to mark 300 years of the birth of Adam Smith. And I’m debating in Cambridge on ’This House Believes we need a new Thatcher’ (though I can’t see how anyone could possibly oppose that)!
And our Chairman James Lawson, Research Director Maxwell Marlow and I will be attending the next meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society in a few days. That's the prestigious international association of pro-freedom thinkers and doers. We’ll be in Bretton Woods — the place where, just shy of 80 years ago, the system of fixed currencies was agreed. (Like all price-fixing, it came to an ignominious end in 1971.) Can’t wait to see who won the auction to stay in Keynes’s room there!
Our Research Director Maxwell Marlow has been speaking at schools in Stoke-On-Trent and institutions like the Scottish Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, as well as visiting labs and hospitals to see AI at work in medical care (one of the recommendations in our AI report is that the NHS should do a lot more of this).
ON THE SUPER-BLOG
Dr Madsen Pirie thinks he knows how to reduce costs for new, small and aspiring businesspeople. Simply announce a three-year reduction (or better, a freeze) in business rates wherever landlords agree to a simultaneous-year rent freeze. That way the business, not the landlords, get the benefit of lower taxes. Simples!
And Tim Worstall notes how the Prime Minister is being urged by the head of the National Infrastructure Commission to shut down the UK’s gas network and spend billions on rolling out heat pumps. When, asks Worstall, did we pass such powers over to the unelected? And others in Whitehall are urging the government to spend more on UK infrastructure than the benefit they calculate that will bring. The folks in Whitehall, it seems, don’t know best. Or is this just another ‘haphazard’ use of AI?
MEDIA
Maxwell Marlow was on TalkTV on the legacy of Liz Truss, in CapX on his immigration panel and on Times Radio rubbishing suggestions for a global minimum wealth tax, as was our Executive Director Duncan Simpson in Guido.
Director of Engagement and Operations Mimi Yates was in the Sunday Express on how AI can help the police fight sexual crimes more effectively and in Guido on the net zero row-back. Emily Fielder was in CapX on pre-briefed measures to “help” first-time buyers, and Director of Government Relations James Price chatted to Politics Home about the direction of the Conservative Party.
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And I quote…
Looking up info on Margaret Thatcher in preparation for my Cambridge debate, I came across this nice tribute to the Nobel economist (and former ASI Academic Advisory Board member) F A Hayek, in her book The Path to Power: “the most powerful critique of socialist planning and the socialist state…to which I have returned so often [is] F A Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom." Now you know where the Thatcher Revolution came from.
Bye…
e
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