Expert comment: Andy Burnham appoints UK's first dedicated AI Minister

In light of Prime Minister Andy Burnham appointing, Kanishka Narayan MP, as the UK's first dedicated AI Minister, the University of Salford's Professor of AI and Public Policy, Professor Richard Whittle, shares his thoughts. He comments:

"The appointment, announced by Prime Minister Andy Burnham, of Kanishka Narayan MP as the UK's first AI (Artificial Intelligence) Minister represents further recognition of AI as a key policy challenge, one with tremendous potential but, as noted in the new Minister's LinkedIn statement, one also with "real risks" for jobs and the pace of change impacting our economy and society. This already marks a move to reality, absent in the previous hype driven AI commentary of the last government.

"I welcome the Minister's statement that nations have a narrow window to shape AI or be shaped by it. But warn against turning that urgency into a race to declare Britain AI ready. Readiness assumes we already know what we are preparing for. A technology moving this fast requires resilience instead. The capacity of places, public services and households to adapt, to benefit whatever form the technology takes, and to withstand disruption when it arrives in forms nobody predicted.

"Every government wants to be AI ready, but ready for what? Nobody knows what the impacts of this technology will look like in five years. The Minister's first 100 days should be spent building resilient AI adoption, communities with the skills and access to take part, public services that improve without becoming fragile, and local economies that can adapt as the technology changes. Resilience is not over caution. It is what lets you move fast without breaking things.

"Britain, though, is not one place. Salford research on the geography of AI finds that exposure to the technology varies enormously between city regions, and that the places least equipped to adapt are often the most exposed. A national strategy written only in Whitehall will see none of this. The Minister needs to put local evidence and local institutions at the centre of his approach, giving councils and combined authorities the data to understand their own labour markets and the backing to act on it. It is heartening that this appointment is echoing a wider change to place based economic policy.

"The same resilience test applies to households. Salford research on AI pricing warns that the gains from the technology can be quietly captured through personalised and algorithmic pricing, with consumers paying the cost. Our work with local government tells the other half of the story, digital inclusion generates real economic returns and underpins any promise of better public services. Residents without access, skills and confidence cannot benefit from a transformed state, however impressive the technology behind it.

"And the risks I worry about are looming rather than distant. Britain increasingly runs on AI models, computing power and cloud infrastructure owned by a small number of overseas firms, and every layer of that stack carries a price set elsewhere. This dependency is an economic exposure in its own right. It leaves our firms and public services renting their productivity from abroad, sending a growing share of the gains offshore, and it leaves us with little leverage when geopolitical tension reaches the technology, as it already has with semiconductors and export controls. If AI proves as consequential as the Minister believes, and I think it will, then these dependencies deserve the seriousness we give energy security. That is what they have become.

"Above all, we need to reconsider what we actually want from AI. Do we want endless cycles of efficiency, driving down costs and doing what we have always done, only cheaper? Or do we want to grow the economy? These are not the same thing and the current national conversation too often confuses them. An economy where large firms use AI mainly to cut costs is an economy shedding wages, hollowing out the towns those wages sustained, and calling the result productivity. Good growth in every postcode looks different. It is firms using AI for real innovation, new products, new services and new markets, work that did not exist before rather than the same work done by fewer people. Efficiency has its place. But a national AI strategy should be judged on what it creates, not on what it trims away.

"So I make five direct asks of the Minister's first 100 days.

1. Publish local AI exposure and adoption data for every city region, with backing for the local institutions that can act on it.
2. Make digital inclusion a funded condition of every AI-enabled public service.
3. Open a formal review of personalised and algorithmic pricing, with consumer protection at its core.
4. Commission an audit of Britain's strategic dependency on overseas AI models, computing power and cloud provision, and a plan to strengthen our position.
5. And convene universities, colleges and employers so that AI education builds the prospects of the students and places most exposed to automation, rather than deepening their exposure.

"The Minister brings his constituency with him, a Welsh community with industry and ambition at its heart. That instinct is what is needed. The test of the first 100 days is whether that instinct becomes policy, whether Salford, the Vale of Glamorgan and every place in between get to shape AI or simply get shaped by it."

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