Kanishka (2:45)

So my parents trained as lawyers in India, but came here. My dad came here to study postgraduate work in business and for about three to five years they ended up working in a range of kind of irregular jobs. So they did agency work in hospitality hotels. They went around late night when shops shut, they went around auditing the shelves to make sure that the supermarkets had an audit of the stock inventory as well. So they did a bunch of agency precarious work, as so many people do before they find their feet, and ultimately requalified and ended up setting up a law firm together as well. Five years into our move here.

Jimmy (3:27)

Interesting. And why was it Wales that you we're heading towards?

Kanishka (3:31)

Yeah, yeah, I think I look back on it, my mom had spent some time in Wales before she got married. She'd studied there, she had some family connections. And that was a really interesting thing because the thing that I only later found out about Wales is so many people feel that it's the sort of size where you can come in, get a warm welcome and then move on together. Because the community element is. Is a really tight knit thing. People say in Wales, you're always only one degree of separation away from everyone else. In Wales, that kind of holds true. And so I think when my parents were thinking, how do we give our family the best chance at opportunity? Wales really stood out for the fact that, yes, there was familiarity, but there was this belief that that familiarity would mean a warm welcome and a helpful step up.

Jimmy (4:14)

And then a year later, you win a scholarship to Eton.

Kanishka (4:17)

Yeah, it was. It was a very odd experience, you know, in India, you kind of look at Britain and you say, what are schools that are meant to be good schools? And I remember Eden had been covered in the news and so I came here with no idea of what it meant in the kind of broader social context. So I. My brother and I used to walk up all the time to Catais High School and Inner city State School in Cardiff, which is where we studied. But in my mind I thought this might be an exciting thing. And I had this brilliant Welsh teacher, Mr. Thomas, and I remember he sat me down and he said, you know, you seem to be really geeky and excited about studying math and science and I think, I think you should apply to a place like Eton. And so I remember getting my head teacher Catage to sign the form. He was on the bus breaking up a fight. And I kind of walked up to him and I said, I'm going to apply for a scholarship exam at Eton and I need you to Sign this form. And he kind of was. Just had like no cognitive space to think about signing a form. So he just sort of scribbled something on the form. I sent it off and, you know, had a slightly patchy sense. I was good at maths and science, not so good at sort of English history at the time. And so they were still generous enough to give me a huge amount of financial assistance and totally changed the trajectory of my life completely.

Jimmy (5:33)

Can you remember much about the exam? What's an entrance exam? To eat it like?

Kanishka (5:36)

I mean the math stuff is. It's a bit like the kind of Math Olympiad. So it's not your usual curriculum. You actually, I think, are not supposed to finish the exam. The whole point is they're testing, not that you can get 100 out of 100, they're testing whether given the problem that you haven't seen before, how do you sort of engage on it. And so the maths bit was really engaging and challenging. The general paper was kind of IQ test, like so logical puzzles, things like that. And then the history, the geography and some of the other stuff was just really tough for me because it was all new stuff.

Jimmy (6:11)

And how did you find your time then at Eton? Because it's got, it's got this sort of, from the outside, quite an interesting reputation and perhaps not always, you know, the best over the last couple of decades in terms of its impact on UK politics and so on. How did you find the time there?

Kanishka (6:27)

Yeah, I think the impact thing is interesting, you know, from my point of view. As I said, my parents were working in minimum wage jobs very precariously in petrol stations and hotels. My brother was at Catais High School. We used to live in a one bed flat. So my brother and I shared a room. We never had a room. And then I was at Eton. I had this whole room to myself, this huge, expansive educational experience. As I said, it totally changed the trajectory of what I thought I could do in life. For me it was a huge gift. But in terms of impact, you know, I feel like for some people an experience of that extreme privilege educationally can instill huge conviction and a sense that you've, you deserve to be running things. And that's one path. The other path is that there are lots of peers of mine as well who come out and say that they recognize that privilege and they see that that isn't available widely. And part of the reason it's not available widely is because of the context of our society and institutions and they want to use everything they've gained from it to try and move the needle on that question. And, you know, I feel part of one of many people who came out of Eton who. Who want to try and make a mark on that. And I think that story is not a frequently told story, but I think it's certainly my story and a story that I feel very keenly.

Jimmy (7:49)

And what is it about the school that really does encourage people towards public service, do you think? Because I think it's actually one of the challenges that we have as a country is that sometimes public service, being a civil servant politician, isn't perhaps held in the same status as it is in Singapore, perhaps, and so on. But what is it about Eton that encourages people down that path?

Kanishka (8:12)

Yeah, I think from my point of view, I turned up very interested in wanting to become a scientist. I wanted to work at kind of NASA or something and really push the frontier of understanding scientific truth and left thinking that I wanted to really work on public policy, changing the course of how the country and the world could be better through that. And I think it's because you're encouraged to think big. You're encouraged to be engaged in the battle of ideas. And especially in that moment, you know, I Left school in 2008 in that moment. If you asked people what is the biggest way in which you can make a positive difference in the world, people would say public policy. At the time, economics, development economics was a big thing as well. And generally people felt that if you really wanted the country to be better, that politics was the way to do it. And so I think it's a thing that is attractive to people who want to make a positive difference at scale and try and do something deeply impactful. To consider that politics and public policy has for decades, if not centuries been the primary way of doing it, and I think will remain so in the years ahead as well. At the margin that changes from time to time. Sometimes people want to go into finance because it feels like the tough and interesting thing. Sometimes people want to do technology as of now. But I think the common core in Britain that I think is really distinct is that people believe that public policy, the ability for us to get together and through accountable means of democratic representation, change the country for the better. I think that's a really long standing tradition in some of our schools across the country.

Jimmy (9:45)

And you joined the labour party at 16. Did it feel different? Like, obviously, Eton has produced a lot of Conservative prime ministers, but not as known for producing sort of Labour politicians. How was that experience?

Kanishka (9:58)

One of the things I feel strongly is that we massively overdo the impact of institutions on people's beliefs in this country. So for me, a really foundational experience was that every summer I'd go home and my brother and I would share this room and live in Cathay's. And in sixth form we worked in a kebab shop overnight. And so I got a pretty good sense of what South Wales was experiencing in that part of the community. And then I got a sense of what my friends from Eton were experiencing. And when you experience that, you want to make sure that kids in both sets of contexts experience the best shot at opportunity. And when you think that and you look at history, the fact that Healy and then Brown and then now Rachel Reeves are all the best occupants of the role of the treasury, from a fundamental focus on shifting the needle on child poverty, you feel like this is a great vehicle to be able to make positive change in the country. Other people take a different view because they've thought it through. Now, I will say that there is a tradition of people from all sorts of schools, including Eton, in the Labour Party. In fact, I think there's been a serving member of the Labour Party in Parliament from Eaton for every year up until 2010. And so the gap is an aberration rather than the norm.

Jimmy (11:15)

Well, that's a fact. I didn't know. And was that your first job then, working in a kebab shop overnight? Was that the first thing you did for money?

Kanishka (11:21)

Yeah. So I think I. Oh, I think I can't remember if the kebab shop was first or I delivered the Metro newspaper on St. Mary's Road in the morning. In the winter it was bitterly cold and I so viscerally remember it. My gloves were really, really not great gloves and I was handing out Metro newspapers on St. Mary's Road when commuters were going through at about 7am it was freezing cold.

Jimmy (11:43)

That's interesting. Often the newspaper. I sometimes think of this as generational in terms of like boomers and Gen X, often their first money will have been from newspaper deliveries. The sort of next generation, our generation, millennials, tends to be kind of like hospitality, bar work, etc, and now actually the younger generations earn the first money online. And I just think it is such a formative experience. It perhaps has more impact on the way that you see the world than institutions, perhaps, given your. What you were saying earlier. So let's look, let's. Let's fast forward a bit. We'll sort of skip our Oxford and Stanford. Maybe we'll come back to Those one day. But you get appointed the AI Minister by Keir Starmer. What was your reaction when you got that phone call?

Kanishka (12:31)

Well, the Chief Webb called me and I was in a cab going home. And for a period of time, both pre election and then immediately after election, I was off the conviction that the primary crisis in Britain was a crisis of prosperity, that the best path to fairness was a path that worked through greater prosperity. A richer country was going to be a fairer country, and that AI and technology had huge opportunity to be the central driver of that prosperity. So when I got the call and was offered the role, I just felt this huge sense that I'd spent so much time thinking about it, preparing for what some of the public policy answers were for Britain when it came to technology, that the opportunity to try and then do that in practice was a huge gift. And so I felt very grateful. But more than anything else, I remember going home, I wrote down a list of sort of before I got into the institution and became native, I thought, what are. What are the 10, 15 things that I think I want to try and do within the first three months that will move the needle? And, you know, it's just very gratifying. I remember writing my first note to the Secretary of State and saying, there are 15 things that I think we need to try and get done within the next 90 days. I think 12 of them we've gotten done. And so it's. I just feel really grateful for the opportunity. I think the driver of prosperity and growth for our country is going to be AI for the course of the foreseeable years. And at the same time, there are lots of difficult social questions that are also fundamentally driven by AI and the experience of safety online. And so the combination of those two things, I think, are the two most important things in British politics.

Jimmy (14:07)

So what is the job of the AI Minister? Because it's quite a new job in some ways. There aren't that many holders of it previously. So, yeah. What is the job of the AI Minister?

Kanishka (14:16)

I think about it in terms of outcomes. There are two things that I need to make sure that I deliver. One is to make the country richer as a result of capturing all the opportunities of AI right across the country. So drive growth, but drive growth that everyone can be a part of. And then the second part of it is that alongside that, to do it not just at speed and scale, but to turn the steering wheel in the direction of our values. And that, to me, is really fundamentally about making sure people are safe online, that our adoption of AI is responsible and that we're driving it with British values as well. So yes, go fast and go further in terms of growth as a consequence of AI, but to also give a direction in the, in the direction of the things that are really important to us in Britain.

Jimmy (14:56)

How do you define AGI?

Kanishka (15:00)

Wow. So AGI is, there's a narrow way of thinking about it, which is what is a capability for AI models which can out compete or match humans in terms of core tasks that are critical to intelligence. So language, reasoning, vision, memory, some of the fundamental building blocks of intelligence. At what point does AI meet the threshold of human competence across a range of these tasks? So that gets you AGI. There are sort of two deeper meanings to it which are less to do with just what a model can do. But if you think about what the purpose of a definition is, the purpose of a definition is to try and understand when something will make a difference in the real world. And so, yes, the model capability you define in this way. The second way I think about it is at what point, not just because of the model, but the scaffolding and the tasks around agency. At what point do those models combine to actually have human like capabilities? Because at the moment the kind of AI is sort of like a team member who will come and just do one task and then will drop out, and then we'll come and do one task and drop out. That's not a very useful human like intelligence capability, the capability of not just vision and reasoning, but the ability to knit those together. So the second thing I think about when I think about useful ways of thinking about AGI is when does the sort of knitting work out so that models can work together and develop genuine agentic outcomes? And ultimately the question is when do they not just have the capability to do that, but the economics of IT and its integration with how we live our lives become such that AI truly becomes deployable in a way that you can do that at your home, you can do that in a robotic supermarket or manufacturing context, you can do that in an office. So those are the three steps. I think a lot of the conversation is focused on the first, which is when does the model become so good that it can match human capability across a key range of specific capabilities. But for me, the big picture is to go from that to then it having a degree of agency and then it having agency in an economic way.

Jimmy (17:06)

Yes, I think the unproactive point is an interesting one, actually. It's like having a highly qualified master's student who is, who is quite unproactable. And do you think that we will be there by the time of the next election? Because I've asked both Peter Kyle and the Prime Minister this and it's been interesting to get their responses. But, yeah, do you, do you think we'll have AGI by the next election?

Kanishka (17:35)

I think on this, like, first rung of the ladder, which is, do I think we'll get models that can match human capability on these range of tasks by the end of this decade? I think the answer is actually that's a pretty highly likely thing. So whether it's 2029 or whether it's 2032, you know, somewhere in that range, I think it's, it's, it's got a high likelihood, but, but I don't think it's a slam dunk. I think it's dependent in part on some of the key bottlenecks of energy and land and being able to build the infrastructure for it and memory in particular as well. But if you just said to me, what's your bet for the timeline? I'd say 50, 60% chance it happens by the end of the decade.

Jimmy (18:15)

All right, interesting. That almost makes you the most skeptical of the three that I've asked.

Kanishka (18:20)

Is that right?

Jimmy (18:20)

All right, well, Peter Carr was like, yeah, I think he's going to be there. And I was literally interviewing Keir Starmer a couple weeks later. I said, well, you know, here's your Secretary of State. And he just said, well, you know, I think Peter's pretty close, but he is an ambitious guy. And then he moved him.

Kanishka (18:36)

Right, okay. I can't be the doomer of. Of the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State of Business and the A minister. The AI Minister needs to be the hype man for AI. Look, no, I think there's a good chance it can be by the end of the decade.

Jimmy (18:48)

Yeah, I think it's. That's a fair summary of it. And what do you think the impact could be? Right, like, that's the critical thing that we're talking about here, obviously, the impact on jobs. What do you think, Will, you know, what's the job that's most at risk over the next three or four years?

Kanishka (19:06)

So I think the reason I'm really keen on making sure we talk about each of these rungs of the ladder, not just what the model can do, but then is the stitching in place for it to become genuinely agentic? And then beyond that, is it at an economic level so that we can actually deploy this at scale, those two steps? Are really important, you know, on the model, as you. As you said, maybe we're five years out, maybe we're seven years out. But I think the next two steps actually will take a long time, because as with so many foundational technologies, historically, it's not just whether the technology is good enough. You're thinking about the steam engine, you think about even things like ATMs. I think for at least two decades after ATMs, the number of accountants in the world grew, didn't decline. And so the reason for those is because the patchiness of capability and the fact that our organizations, all of us, take quite a long time to reform ourselves so that the technology works with us and for us, means that there's a way to go. So that's the starting point on which sorts of jobs are most exposed. I think the jobs that appear to be most exposed are jobs that involve one sort of task or narrow set of tasks where the outcome can be validated so that a model, you can tell a model, here's some data. Try a task, it tries the task, you can validate whether the outcome was good or bad, and you put that back into the training and the model improves. So tasks that are narrowly specified don't involve lots of different sorts of things knitted together and where you can validate the outcome. So I'm thinking, for example, exam tests and things like that, written exam tests, you know, clearly those have been done well, a lot of maths, actually. And scientific progress is being driven by AI. You can clearly see that administrative roles, which largely involve mechanical writing and copying of particular things, I think those sorts of roles are most exposed to AI. But I think there are so many roles in the world which involve not just the tasks, but the knitting that stitches it all together. And I think when it comes to those sorts of things, I think there we have a bit of a longer Runway to go.

Jimmy (21:08)

And you've got this sort of announcement today about sort of upskilling people.

Kanishka (21:14)

That's right. Because the biggest question, Jimmy, is in terms of what the impact of AI is on jobs is to impress on people that we have agency on this question. It's not just something that we sit back and say, when do you think edge AI comes? And kind of what happens as a result? No, we are participants in this. We can shape this. And so the announcements this week have been about shaping it in the direction of human progress. And so we had committed to train 7 and a half million people by 2030 in AI skills. We are well on course to do that in fact, we're going to breach that target and be even more ambitious. So we're going to go punch bigger in that context as well. We've got an AI hub. I encourage everyone. We'll share the link with you. We're encouraging everyone to go online. You can get essential courses so that you can upskill yourself in this context as well. And we're setting up local programs, tech local. We're putting 27 million into it so that kids with placements in terms of work experience, graduate jobs, local jobs across the country. The opportunity of AI becomes way more spread than the opportunity of technology was in the last two decades where I felt it was too concentrated in just London or Silicon Valley. This time we want to spread it right across the country.

Jimmy (22:23)

And how do you think about reaching the people that need this most? Right, you know, yes, we'll put a link in the show, notes to it and so on. But I dare say the people that are already watching this show are pretty engaged in this stuff. Right. Like, how do you think about reaching, you know, all across the country in places that, you know, might not have access to this as much?

Kanishka (22:44)

I think this is a really critical thing. So, you know, the first thing I will say, by the way, is online distribution has meant that you will be surprised at which parts of the country people might be engaged with you on. And so there are kids who came to me for my constituency in Barry island and in South Wales who said they had seen venture podcasts online and as a result wanted to build a career in tech and starting a company. The context of imagination for kids in this country, right across the country, has really shifted because they can now engage with content right across the world. And so Jimmy's jobs, I'm sure, is going to be played in South Wales, and there'll be kids who will be looking at AI Skills Hub as well. But broadly speaking, one of the things that we're really keen on doing is making sure, exactly as you say, that we're finding other ways of reaching people who we really want to be a fundamental part of the economic opportunity here. There are two things that are really on my mind.

Sunny (23:35)

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Kanishka (24:14)

We've got a series of AI ambassadors that we've engaged. Tom Blomfield from Monzo and Go Cardless fame being one. And my big ask of them is to work with us to reach schools and workplaces right across the country to be able to take this message out and say, we think kids growing up in every part of the uk, Scotland, Northern Ireland, England, Wales, are all able to now make the most of the opportunity. So we're going to get the most engaging people, people who've done it, to go and say that you can also do it regardless of where you're growing up. And then the second part is that we want to make sure that the power of public services, which are spread across the country, are being made the most of in spreading the message. And so one of the big things that we've announced recently is that we're going to take some big moves in education in particular to make sure that teachers are supported with AI, that learning can be personalized so that kids and teachers right across the country can see the opportunity of AI directly and as a result really feel like they can drive that progress regardless of where they grow up.

Jimmy (25:13)

What have you used personally to sort of train yourself on AI? As the AI Minister?

Kanishka (25:21)

I have a couple of different things. So one, you know, the usual chatbots. I've recently switched. I used to mostly use Chat, GPT and Claude. I've now actually felt the Gemini is probably my most frequently used chatbot. I just feel the range is great. The deep thinking research stuff is really helpful. I have done some very minor coding on cursor, so I find being able to go on a chatbot like Gemini Increasingly or Claude code and then be able to use cursor has been interesting, although I've mostly worked with others in doing that as well. Then the third thing is I use a couple of the tools, Opus, Clip and VEED in particular for editing and video and kind of some creative content work from time to time as well. I'm kind of pretty, pretty amateur edition at it. So your producers are going to be telling me, telling me how bad a job I do compared to their remarkable skill.

Jimmy (26:16)

But.

Kanishka (26:16)

But those are three things that I feel are most useful.

Jimmy (26:18)

We will get you some clips for it. But what do you think? Because it's funny, sometimes friends ask me when they're moving jobs or whatever, like I've got a bit of time and I just say to them, well, look, get a pro account of pretty much any one of them and just play with it and tell it what you're interested in, et cetera. But what do you think will be the foundational skills? Because obviously it's still matters what people are putting in at that stage. Right. So what are the foundational skills that you think are going to matter in the future?

Kanishka (26:48)

One of the things that I feel, even just for myself when I'm using it, is that the vigilance I have to have about the quality of information has to be way higher than when I'm engaging with someone in person. Because when you're engaging with someone in person, you have some proxies for where you're at, right? If it's someone who's. If you're engaging with a kid and you're asking about something specific, you know that there might be creativity, but you don't want to believe all the facts that might come out of it. If you're engaging with an expert with some kind of proxies and a sense of reputation for quality, you can kind of, you've got to be vigilant still, but you can, you know where you stand. Whereas with the AI chatbots, I feel like the fundamental thing is how you retain the cognitive vigilance to say, hey, I'm going to call bullshit on this and on other bits I'm going to kind of feel like, hey, this is the right information that is really fundamental. And so how we build that, especially in a context where we rely more and more on the output of the chatbot, how we make sure that the foundational bits of analytical understanding, cognitive vigilance generally, so that ultimately we are all becoming exceptional managers of AI systems where AI can do this and that for us, but we become the managers who are able to test where it's going right, where it's going wrong, and how we want to use it in the day to day context that we're working on. I think that to me is the most foundational and fundamental thing.

Jimmy (28:18)

How can young people build that cognitive vigilance? Because I think it's a really interesting phrase, but it's one of those things that I think, yeah, it's easy for us to do when you've got a bit of experience in the world and so on. But as a young person, how'd you build that.

Kanishka (28:32)

You know, I feel one of the things in this context is we've got to remain very focused on how the education system, I think in particular can build some of the things that are really building blocks for it. So, one, making sure that kids are being able to engage with when they're doing an essay. Yes, they might use ChatGPT to come and write the essay, but then you come and you get them to debate the essay with you. One of the things I found early on in my career in an educational context was you could write whatever you wanted. But when someone said, explain this to me and run me through all the steps of logic, and you got beaten up for it because people caught you out when you. When you didn't really fully know what you had written, I think that that sort of thing of really understanding each step of logic and having that tested in verbal form or forms that you can't just hide behind an essay, I think that's sort of critical. I think even when you're writing essays and you can't do that verbal stuff, being able to test for originality of thought, there's some bits that are still not easy to do with AI. I think there might be small ways in which you can do it through the assessment process, but for me, the fundamental thing is how we get kids to engage with each other, but in the classroom context, in building the building blocks of logic when they're writing things or when they're thinking about maths, how they think about really the kind of the logic that allows you to do calculations that you're doing. I think we need our assessment framework to more and more focus on those building blocks, the sort of underlying stuff, rather than just the answer.

Jimmy (30:06)

Yeah, I think that's. It's interesting that that verbal jazz thing I think will become more and more kind of like important, actually, and how we test that, because we have mainly tested people through written word, really, and it's going to have to, it's going to have to change. But you're not in education yet. What do you think? Government? And I'd be interested in your experiences as a new, relatively new MP and as a relatively new government minister. Do you think that government sort of over indexes on risk when it comes to new frontier technology?

Kanishka (30:48)

That's interesting, I think. Look, one thing I do feel that's happened over the course of the last couple of decades is that we haven't indexed enough on the upside of technology for sharing prosperity across the country post the global financial crisis. You can clearly see that America grew way faster than us and was way more productive than us. And one of the biggest. And that's had huge benefits in terms of prosperity you can spread across the country. It's had huge benefits in terms of global standing sovereignty, national security, hard power. What happened in Britain in the last two decades was broadly that we massively under invested in technology and capital investment in technology. And as a result, in part of that we have not been as prosperous as we ought to have been. And so if you just take that and you say if that's one of the primary crises in this country, then you've got to flip that and we've got to capture the opportunity of technology this time around and AI in particular, because it's going to be a huge driver of prosperity and, and that prosperity will be a driver of both fairness and of national security. And so, yes, I think we need to look at the upside a lot more. I think that said, one of the things I find is that the conversation on risk is not necessarily over indexed in risk, but partially indexed on risk. What I mean by that is there are some things in risk which matter. People's experience of technology is driven by whether they can trust it, whether their kids feel safe from it, whether they feel like it's not going to cause bits of bias. But when we're even thinking about that, I think some of our policy debate ends up being behind on where the product is. So recently we passed a law which said we should now allow enforcement authorities like the police and some trusted authorities to use AI to spot child abuse material. Because the law didn't even allow that. The law said the technology is bad, we're going to ban the technology in these sorts of contexts. And what that did is when bad actors started to use new technology, we couldn't catch them fast enough because we didn't understand what the technology allowed us to do. And so one of the big things I feel is yes, we need to focus on the upside and the opportunity a lot more than just the risk. But when we're thinking about the risk to think about what is actually possible technologically. And I think that is something that government needs to get better at. We're trying very hard in the department to get better at, which is start with where the technology is. Don't just start with what you think the law is or ought to be.

Jimmy (33:10)

Why do you think we don't have bigger companies here? Because when Pete Carr came on, he said, you know, I want a 1 trillion company based here in the UK and I was like, fine, Secretary of State, but you know, arguably we should try and focus on getting 100 billion one first. Even a 50 billion one. Right. Like why? This is an area that you've worked in a lot before, Parliament as well. Why do you think we don't have that?

Kanishka (33:33)

Yeah, I think people will say all the core inputs, Britain's market size is small. Britain's got a capital challenge. Britain's got a challenge in terms of capital markets and exits, kind of. There are definitely things we should be doing on all of them and we're doing things on all of them. I'm very happy to talk about them. I think the central thing from my point of view is that the most valuable commodity and asset now is, is a sense of outsized ambition and optimism. And I think in this country the biggest thing we need to do is radically change, go back into our heritage where Britain explored the world, found amazing new technologies, developed tons of huge world changing ideas. We need to capture that again and chase it into the future and say that the biggest thing we want is for every child growing up in the UK to think, what is the most ambitious possible thing I could be doing in this context? How do I try and radically move the needle for this country, for my community, and in doing so, for the world? And so that culture of ambition and that culture of valuing, when people have been ambitious and either succeeded hugely or failed, I think that culture to me is the single most important input into the question that you're asking and how

Jimmy (34:46)

do we get more of that? And I know that is a really tough question for a politician to answer, but how do you get more of that culture of ambition?

Kanishka (34:53)

I think the biggest thing when you're trying to change culture is actually increasingly content and narrative. One of the things I can consistently feel and I talk about is that when I was in the Bay Area in the us, people feel like the reality is pretty good. But the thing that constantly drives people is that the narrative is up here. And so they constantly go and pitch you something. And it feels incredible, right? People, I remember someone saying to me, I want to create an intergalactic species, right? Like I want us to travel into space and go and do all these things. If a child said that to you in Britain, people would just say, that is incredibly odd. Whereas in Silicon Valley people say, how can I invest? And so the narrative is up here and it just drags the reality up and into the future. In Britain, we have a good reality. I think we're really good in lots of Places. But the narrative is often down here. People are sort of constantly saying what is happening economically. Well, economically. Two days ago the PMI came out and said business activity confidence is at the highest rate in two years, driven by technology. But no one is telling that story. So the narrative is down here.

Jimmy (35:53)

Yeah.

Kanishka (35:54)

So the biggest thing I think we can do and why I think what you're doing, Jimmy, is hugely important, is that we just need to shift the narrative, at least the narrative up to the point of the reality, ideally even further. So that what we're all doing in our day to day lives is saying we're chasing the dream.

Jimmy (36:10)

Yeah.

Kanishka (36:11)

And let that be the thing that dominates the conversation so that we can all help each other chase that dream. Rather than being fantastic people at diagnosing the reality and all the problems with the reality and the ways in which it could go wrong. That's an important skill in lots of places is really critical. But, but I think what we need a little bit more of is chasing the dream rather than being fantastic, accurate folks are diagnosing the problem and what

Jimmy (36:38)

is the government's role in it? I mean, I get the content point and so on, but how does government raise ambitions? How does, yeah, politicians, how do you sort of do that?

Kanishka (36:49)

Well, I think, you know, the easiest starting point is to make sure some of the key inputs are fixed. So we are making sure that if you're a worker in a startup, you have the best option tax option scheme in the world through the Entrepreneurs Management Incentive Scheme emi. So that's really fundamental. When you dream big, you make sure that you can chase that and the tax system supports you in chasing that. We're making sure that we're plowing tons of capital into making sure that kids in this country can start and scale and stay here when they're starting businesses. So the bbb, the British Business bank, is now going to invest not just a billion and a half, but two and a half billion a year and focus that on technology and scale ups. We're going to make sure that alongside the tax system for workers, alongside capital, we're making sure there's high quality data so that companies can be created here and grow here. We're making sure government plays a role as a customer. So all of those fundamental inputs of capital, of customer revenue, of data, of talent, right across the board, we're making progress. But the big thing that I think government should do, and we're doing more and more, is to reset the conversation is to show up and say if you've done Fantastically well in Britain. We are going to make a national hero out of you. And we're going to not just do that, but we're going to tell that story again and again and again in our public debate, in our schools, in our organizations, across the board. So the fact that Tom Blomfield from Monzo is an AI ambassador, or Raya Hadsell from DeepMind is an AI ambassador, or Simon Johnson who won the Nobel Prize for economic as an AI ambassador is in large part it feels like, okay, you've appointed someone, but the big thing is we're saying these are people that we want to make national champions out of, and there are many more across the country. And every person who thinks, I want to go and have a shot at it now sees that they have not just achieved something, but they've been made a big deal out of in this country. And we're telling the story right across the country because we want more and more people to take a shot at it.

Jimmy (38:37)

Do you think we need some kind of like Britain's Got Entrepreneur type competition?

Kanishka (38:43)

Yeah, the sort of Shark Tank type thing with a patriotic element elements to it? Yeah, I think so. You know, because one of the things I feel is it's not just about shooting big and just doing what others are doing in America or China or India or whatever. It's actually doing it with British values. And one of the things I find really compelling, I remember I spoke to founders who just left Google, DeepMind to start a new frontier lab. And I said, why are you. Why are you doing this in London? And they said really compellingly that when we build in Britain, we build it with taste. If you look at how much slop is being created with AI and how much science has been created with AI in Silicon Valley, it's a lot more slop than science in Britain, it's science and much less slop. And that's because we've always had this sense that we want to not just have technological progress, but we want to have technological progress in the interest of people. And I think we can tell a very distinct story about what is distinctly British AI or distinctly British entrepreneurialism, which is rooted in real world difference. So Bryn's got. Yeah. Reality TV show, Focus on Enterprise. Jimmy, your next expansion for Jimmy's Jobs is ready to go.

Jimmy (39:51)

Well, I just think it's something in, and it is partly why we started Jimmy Jobs as a feature five years ago was that the media landscape I felt in America was much more developed towards entrepreneurship and so on. Many good business publications in the UK like Times, Business and Financial Times, but it wasn't perhaps as accessible to a younger generation, essentially. And, you know, they've now launched various podcasts as well. But I just think it's really important to sort of demonstrate these stories because they aren't quite the national figures that they are in America as much like, we have a few, but we don't have as many. And I don't sure we necessarily want some of the hero worship that goes with American entrepreneurs, but, you know, and that is, that is arguably a sort of British difference with it. But tell me more about your time at Stanford and your kind of reflections on it.

Kanishka (40:41)

Yeah, so I went to an MBA at Stanford, spent two years there on a combination of both policy and frontier technology. And the biggest thing I came away with was the sense that whatever you want to do, whatever area you want to make a difference in, you do so with a completely outsized sense of urgency and agency, the sense that you can do whatever you want because people have gone to Stanford and then have created something out of absolutely nothing. Intergalactic species, people are literally creating companies to take you into space all the time. So there's agency in the world. But in order to do that, you need to have urgency, because everyone else is trying to do that, everyone is competing to try and do that. And so whatever it is, don't waste time just ruminating over it. Attack it with urgency. There's a really interesting insight, which is that you learn a lot more from action than you do from just ideation in Britain. I remember when I was at university as an undergraduate, I thought, if I really want to try and make a difference in the world, I just need to sit down, read enough about it, and really crack it in my mind.

Jimmy (41:49)

Yeah.

Kanishka (41:49)

And then I can go and really make a difference. In the Stanford culture context, it was, well, you can think as much as you want, but if you want to make a difference in the real world, go out there, speak to people, learn their problem in a really visceral way, Develop something, test it, learn from that again, and test and go out in the field. And so this sense that there is agency in the world, do something that involves the exercise of agency, but do it with urgency. Go out there and do it in the field so that you learn quicker and you can get better. I think those are the two big things that I took away from it.

Jimmy (42:22)

What would your advice be? So one of the things that I. That was the kind of founding pillars of this show a little bit was that Actually getting mentor advice from 50, 60 year olds is fine, but when you're a young person, you actually need somebody that's maybe like a couple of steps ahead is actually better part because the world is moving so much quicker anyway and the context changes and so on. What would your advice be to a 22 year old in 2026 about what to do? A young Kanishka perhaps?

Kanishka (42:55)

I think the, I think the point you just made about the world is changing very quickly and getting advice from and speaking to people in whatever your area you're interested in is really important. So my main piece of advice would be think big, feel like you have agency in the world. So if you want to do something just like think of the biggest possible thing you can do and then dive in. And so don't expect that the conventions that people tell you of, you just step on this rung and then that rung and then this rung. Abandon that sense of caution, go directly at the thing you want to do, engage with it early in a hands on way, whatever it is, if you want to, if you want to do a tech startup, go and be the most junior intern in that startup. Do everything you can because it's only when you're in the field of action that you learn a lot more rather than if you're sitting there and reflecting on it. And so think big and act now are probably the two big things that I'd say to them.

Jimmy (43:49)

Do you think we need to be more accepting of risk as a country?

Kanishka (43:53)

100%. The thing I keep saying right across the board, whether it's if you're allocating capital, if you're sitting in government trying to reform things, if you're in the content world, if you're in schools and you're thinking about how do, how to make sure that our kids are going to be best placed in the future, technology and economy across the board, we need to be way more risk on. The problem in this country has been that we've had a crisis of productivity and in order to really move that, if each of us takes the incremental bit of risk, I think we'll be way better off than otherwise. Now that's not to say that there aren't lots of challenges in taking risk for people. I completely feel like in lots of areas, pensions, the wider pay context, there are lots of areas in which we have just put a lot of burden of risk on people. And as a result it's unsurprising that they have not been taking as much risk. But there are lots of areas where we're not taking risk for unwanted reasons. And so the thing I feel really interesting about the US is that especially after Covid, the US kind of just leapt into this what I'd call a YOLO economy. Right. People quit their jobs to start businesses, people took big risks, People took risks in investing. They put away money from more money into stocks and crypto. We see some of the signs of that amongst young people who are very focused on investing in some of those kind of risky assets. But what we don't see is a systematic pattern of people in Britain being able to take those risks. And it's only when you take some of those big risks that you get some big upside outcomes for the country at large as well.

Jimmy (45:20)

Yeah. I am often surprised at how engaged 18 and 19 year olds are with their sort of like portfolios and the different investments they've got. It's just completely shifted in 15 years years. Their kind of knowledge of finance and so on. It's quite, you know, impressive. And it is a generation that had their formative years almost in the pandemic as well. So it will be interesting to see what, you know, what, what they come

Kanishka (45:43)

out with 100% and, you know, I got a, I got a note from two kids in my consistency in sixth form, go to Welsh language school as Gold Bromorganic and they wrote to me and said, we've seen a bunch about Venture and starting a company, so we developed a platform for STEM learning in Welsh language and we want you to help us grow it. So I wrote to every headteacher in Wales and we've talked about it and they've taken to lots of places, they've done internships. Now the imagination that kids growing up in Britain today have is radically different. Kids in Britain want to take risk, they want to do big things, they want to change their community and country for the better. It's on us to make sure they have all the support to do so.

Jimmy (46:19)

And so they wrote to you as a local MP just to get your involvement.

Kanishka (46:23)

Yeah, they said, we saw that you were in Venture before and kind of we want you to help us do something here.

Jimmy (46:28)

That's really, really encouraging in so many different ways, isn't it? What do you think is the sort of big opportunity? Where would you be sort of focusing if you were in your early 20s? Like, what's your advice on this? You've given us the mindset and so on, but what are maybe perhaps a bit more of the practicalities?

Kanishka (46:48)

Well, I think if you want to work in technology. And if you want to work in AI very specifically and you haven't made a choice of domain, the biggest thing for me is I want Britain to be the best place in the world for the adoption of AI. We should be the absolute best at it. We have lots of the ingredients for doing so. And so to me, the biggest thing would be pick a domain that you're really excited about and just go really lean into that. Understand the domain deeply, but always do so with the mindset of how can technology make this domain and AI make this domain radically better? And if you're able to do that, whether you come at it from a AI first point of view or a domain first point of view. So whether you go and work in medicine first and then think about the AI bit, just constantly be vigilant, think about how technology can make it better, but gain that deep domain understanding. Because to me, it feels very clearly that a huge amount of where opportunity will be in the future is going to be in how we apply technology in ways that actually make a difference to human experiences in lots of different domains.

Jimmy (47:48)

Do you think the development of AI is more similar to nuclear or to the Internet?

Kanishka (48:00)

I actually think this is slightly. I'm gonna. I'm gonna chicken out of the question on, on this one. I think it's a genuinely open question still. And the reason I say that is to make it slightly technical. I think it is currently still unclear to me whether most of the opportunity and risk of AI will come from one big model, which is scaled and scaled and scaled and become bigger and bigger and bigger, so that it's sort of like nuclear, which is, you know, this big thing, but it's only one thing, or, you know, a handful of plants that you generate and that can create lots of opportunity or risks, or whether a lot of the value and opportunity and risk of AI comes from not its bigness, its scaling, but from its diffusion. You get lots of small models. All of them can do really important things. And in the right hands, it can do lots of positive things. In the wrong hands, it can do a lot of terrible things. That's a lot more like the Internet and cyber, which is. It's not a totemic, singular or concentrated opportunity or risk. It's a diffused opportunity and risk. Whether it's the former, the nuclear example, or whether it's the latter, the Internet example is up for grabs. It hasn't been answered conclusively. Some of the questions you asked about AGI, where you get performance in terms of scaling models or whether you get it from other techniques, including small models with distillation, fine tuning. Those are really important inputs into this question, but the answer is currently uncertain.

Jimmy (49:22)

Yeah, I think it'll move towards the latter. I mean, that's my, obviously that's sort of great hope of it as well.

Kanishka (49:30)

Yeah.

Jimmy (49:30)

But I just think it can, it will be, it could be a major, major moment and it could be like sort of basically new rails for the economy. Right. Yeah, that's the sort of like great sort of hope of it. Obviously there are risks and so on. What's on a more personal level, what do you want to achieve as you know, through your kind of parliamentary and ministerial career? Right. What are the things when you almost wrote down that first 12, 15 ideas, what, what was on there?

Kanishka (49:57)

So, so the big picture thing, you know, whenever I. All political careers end in failure. So whenever, whenever my political career ends, the thing I want to look back and say that through something that I did, I was able to change the trajectory of Britain's productivity. And I was able to do that by changing the aspiration and ambition of kids across this country. And that's the sort of very high level thing that I think we can do. And I think it's in some ways in our gift to do so because as I said, I think the biggest input into it is culture. And culture is simply a function of what we talk about and how we act and who we praise and what we find valuable. So that to me is the biggest thing. And in terms of, you know, specifics that we're focused on, on AI in particular, there are three big things that are kind of broad thematic buckets for the, for the list. One is just get a scale of AI infrastructure that is table stakes. If you don't have enough data centers, if you don't have enough compute, if you don't have enough talent, and if you don't have enough of just the basic inputs, you're not, you're not even on the table.

Jimmy (50:55)

And a lot of those are government,

Kanishka (50:57)

a lot of them are government mediated in some way or another. So the first thing is just get on the table by having scale. The second thing is don't just have scale, but have Britishness. So people call it sovereignty or whatever else the kind of policy term is. For me, the question is simply does this country have strategic leverage? In three years time we're sitting at the table with the United States, with China, with Taiwan, with South Korea, with Germany, with France, with the Dutch. Can we stand up and Say we've got some chips on this table. And so that is a very, very specific second aspiration. The third thing which is the most critical thing is I would love for us to be in a place where in five years time, in 10 years time, we look back and we say people across this country felt that technology wasn't something done to them, but done by them. And as a result, we built a durable consensus that technology is a driver of progress and dignity for people across this country. Because the thing in Britain over the last two decades, as I said, is the opportunity wasn't spread. And as a result, the consensus behind technology was very weak and shallow. And so whenever things turn, there is no support that technology and progress and innovation are drivers of prosperity and dignity for us. And when you don't have that, you don't sustain it. And so for me, scale just being on the table is important. Making sure that British sovereignty is a big part of it is important, but the heart of it is to make sure that we build this durable consensus. The way in which AI and technology works serves everyone across the country and as a result, they get bought into it as a national story.

Jimmy (52:26)

Yeah. I was struck by some of the stats in the government report about how only 21 of workers feel confident using AI and almost. What was the other statistic? I'll check my notes now, but that's one in, only one in six businesses are using AI. Like I just thought, gosh, that's, you know, this is a fundamental technological revolution. We need more people embracing it and giving it a go.

Kanishka (52:54)

I think that's exactly right. You know, one of the things that's interesting though is that whenever you ask people in an organization whether they're using AI for work, you get a number, then you ask the organization how many license or seats they've bought, you get a much lower number. A lot of people are trying this stuff.

Jimmy (53:08)

Yeah.

Kanishka (53:08)

But the organization hasn't caught up with them and hasn't been able to find the most valuable ways in which they can make it happen formally. And so at the very least, we can shut this gap and make sure organizations, including government, are delivering what people are already expecting from them because they use this stuff in their day to day personal lives as well. And then the second bit is to get more and more of us feel confident that we can use it in ways that serve our organization's purpose, but ultimately make us feel more fulfilled.

Jimmy (53:34)

Definitely. Well, we've got some quick fire questions for you.

Kanishka (53:37)

All right. This is scary. Bet.

Jimmy (53:39)

Yeah. This is the One that will politicians kind of worry about. Sunny may have some like ones. There's nothing. There's nothing that. Nothing that treacherous in there. What have you used AI for on a personal level recently?

Kanishka (53:57)

Lots of factual research.

Jimmy (53:59)

Yeah, but what about like, fun stuff?

Kanishka (54:03)

Oh, fun stuff. Oh, I. I went on holiday, so I was going to. Well, actually, let me tell you what, I was going to South Korea for a delegation and I looked up a bunch of food options. Everyone told me fried chicken was huge in South Korea. I thought, surely fried chicken can't be the national dish. So anyway, I looked up some stuff about food. I unfortunately am not very, very kind of K wave pilled yet. And so I had to do some pretty basic research on the K wave of K drama and all that sort of stuff as well.

Jimmy (54:37)

That cultural side of things. What's the best thing you've watched on Netflix or a streaming service recently talking about cultural things?

Kanishka (54:46)

Oh, I watched the DeepMind documentary.

Jimmy (54:49)

Yeah.

Kanishka (54:50)

I mean, it's very on message and on brand. But I'll tell you what, you come out of it and you think, one, really proud of Britain and really proud of obviously the founder of DeepMind. But two, that I feel so delighted that he and the company chose to be here and as a result make huge advances in science. Because going back to the sort of Britishness of this stuff, I think that was a really big part of it.

Jimmy (55:13)

Yeah. And I think people. And that is becoming. Getting more and more traction.

Kanishka (55:17)

Right.

Jimmy (55:17)

The fact that Demis decided to stay here and not go to the Valley as kind of piece Teal requested is a huge kind of moment. But it is like if, if you've been in the Valley, like there is no culture there. Like it just doesn't sort of. Well, culture is work and the culture is technology. Right. It's very kind of monoculture. And what is. What's your favorite music?

Kanishka (55:41)

Oh, God. See what I mean? Just recency bias this morning. I've really liked Paolo Nuttini since I was at school. This is like really dated. But this morning as I was walking into work, I think I was listening to Paolo Nuttini. I think it's called Autumn or something. Was the name of the song.

Jimmy (56:00)

Favorite biscuit? The one question.

Kanishka (56:03)

Oh, definitely chocolate digestives.

Jimmy (56:06)

What car do you drive?

Kanishka (56:08)

VW Polo.

Jimmy (56:10)

Oh, right. Okay. Not gone electric yet?

Kanishka (56:13)

Not yet.

Jimmy (56:17)

Will you go electric? I'm surprised. I thought you'd be. Yeah, yeah.

Kanishka (56:20)

I give you the electric vibe. Yeah, I would seriously look at it. My lease is still going strong, so the Polo is serving Me very well, but I will absolutely look into it.

Jimmy (56:32)

And what's kind of like an exclusive that we might get? I'm taking Ramesh Ranganathan's approach this. He just basically asks his guest now for exclusive rather than. Rather than us find a newsline. He's just like, can you give us something we can get?

Kanishka (56:50)

Oh, gosh, I don't really know what an exclusive. I don't leave a very exclusive friendly life. What's an exclusive? I have anything exciting to offer you, Jimmy, I feel I have to get

Jimmy (57:06)

you back next time. Do you play poker? You. You referenced poker quite a few times.

Kanishka (57:11)

I actually don't play poker. I play a bit of cricket every now and then. I go to the gym. Yeah, I do really like going on a bike.

Jimmy (57:22)

That's your kind of thing? Favorite video game? You're part of that generation, right?

Kanishka (57:28)

I mean, I. I mostly played the sports based ones.

Jimmy (57:32)

Yeah.

Kanishka (57:33)

EA Sports, Cricket and FIFA.

Jimmy (57:36)

Very good, Very good. Brilliant. Well, look. Oh, what's the favorite book you've read lately? This kind of impacted you.

Kanishka (57:44)

Yeah. I won't talk about all the AI books because it'll be too on brand, I think. So. I have been reading two things that are really impactful at the moment. One, Maya Angelou's autobiography. It's just really compelling and an amazing life and a very human, forceful story. And then a novel, which I haven't read recently, but is one of my favorite novels of all time, is a book called in the Light of what We Know by Zia Haider Rahman.

Jimmy (58:18)

Oh, okay. I'm not coming across that. What is the. How much do you think you can learn from reading old historical novels and biographies?

Kanishka (58:34)

I think you can learn quite a bit. I mean, generally from books. I learn that some of the sort of depths of human emotion and relationship, which when you're in the midst of stuff, you sort of implicitly pick up. But when you step back and you read, you know, Ewan McEwen or so on, some really compelling stories of human engagement and relationship or lives like Maya Angeli's, I think you take a lot from it. And then the second thing is, you know, more factually in biography terms. I think you learn a lot from people because so many of these ideas are ideas that have come and gone again and again and again and how you both have a degree of sort of understanding that, hey, whatever your bright new ideas, someone's tried that before. And so don't just get too excited about it, but at the same time retain a sense of energy and enthusiasm and optimism to try again because each generation throws itself at the wall with some ideas. I think that makes you get you get a good appreciation from history.

Jimmy (59:30)

Definitely. I'd love to get you back and talk about some of that in a few months time over the summer when there's more time perhaps.

Kanishka (59:37)

Sounds super.

Jimmy (59:37)

Thanks very much for coming on. Cheers. Goodies Good.

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Kanishka (60:08)

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