Alyn Smith: Some AI hype is overblown – and some of it isn’t

Alyn Smith is a performer. Perhaps it comes from spending 15 years in a parliament that not many people in the UK paid an awful lot of attention to, meaning he had to carve a name out for himself. As he’s getting his picture taken, he asks if the photographer wants “the eyebrow”. If you are at all familiar with Smith, you’ll know exactly what he means.

I joke that one of my questions should have been how strong his eyebrow was. He laughs, replies that it’s “pretty strong”, then goes on to tell me about a photo of him when he was wee, sitting in a highchair and “looking quizzically at a rusk”.

So maybe it’s not all to do with having to find ways to shine when you were one of 751 members of the European Parliament. Some of it is just the jovial way Smith approaches politics. Indeed, as we start to delve into the tricky elements of his new brief – he was recently elevated to ministerial office following the resignation of Ben Macpherson – he says he wants to “step over all the sad stories” and focus on the positives.

His new job is as minister for innovation, technology and tertiary education. Despite serving in one parliament or another for over 20 years, being in government is a new challenge. But he argues it’s a good fit because “internationalisation is what we’re all about”. All three of his areas require and benefit from those global ties.

Politicians don’t run things, politicians oversee the people who do run things

He also points to the time he spent on the European Parliament’s Committee on Industry, Research and Energy, which he describes as the “best fun I had in 16 years”. “I love my boffins, the fact that somebody can devote their life to something specific and get really into the subject – whatever it is actually, doesn’t matter – there’s a passion there which I just feed off.

“I’m the ultimate generalist. I skate over the surface of everything, and I think a politician’s job is to see the wood for the trees and not get too bogged down in detail. Politicians don’t run things, politicians oversee the people who do run things and make sure that the people are represented in that.”

That means, he goes on, that he doesn’t intend to involve himself much in “individual disputes or individual issues” that are currently facing many of Scotland’s colleges and universities. Instead, he wants to focus on the bigger picture and how “we’re all going to need to change what we do”.

That is much wider than the financial woes currently plaguing many educational institutions, he says. “It’s about making sure that we’ve got the skills for a dynamic economy, making sure that people are able to live their best lives, in the senior phase education as well. It’s about making sure that we get away from this idea that there’s only one route to success, and that’s a bucket of Highers and a university degree. It’s not.

We are going to need to retrain the entire population

“I feel very, very strongly that we need to do much better, particularly for young men and boys who are checking out of the education system. Give other routes to success and I think people will rise to that.”

He argues that too much of education is based on the idea that young people “come into the system, do a bit of education, do a bit of training, and get a piece of paper, work for 40 years and then retire”. That world of work no longer exists, he says, yet the education system has not kept up. “We need to make sure that bite-sized chunks of accessible learning throughout people’s lives becomes the norm.”

And the task, he says, is not a small one. “We are going to need to retrain the entire population, unless they’re retired and not economically active any more, because so many other skills need to be updated, augmented. We’re quite good at doing that if somebody has a redundancy or a crisis intervention, but we need to make it the norm that people are going to say, ‘I don’t feel I’m sufficiently up on AI, let’s do an AI night course at the local college’.”

In many ways, what Smith is talking about feeds into the public service reform agenda which has rocketed to the top of the Scottish Government’s to-do list. Education as a whole – not just schools – can be part of early interventions, creating community-based support before a crisis point like job loss is reached.

Where does he see opportunities for reforms in his area? “I’m not about reducing the headcount or saving money. I think there’s more work to be done. I want to see the sector thrive and expand, not contract,” he says.

“What we do need to make sure of is that there isn’t duplication. We’re already seeing some moves: Forth College has just entered into a partnership with Edinburgh College in terms of sharing some back-office stuff and greater efficiencies, that’s what it looks like.

“Edinburgh College has got a fantastic scheme with Wester Hailes High, where they provide a building skills apprenticeship on the school premises. That’s transformative for the young men who are doing those courses, but it’s also really cheap to deliver because the skill is actually doing the premises up. That sort of collaboration, that sort of working across the barriers, school, to college, to uni – they should all be working together. Joint degrees, joint qualifications.

“That will itself drive efficiencies, but it’ll drive efficiencies because of the purpose. I’ve made this point with public sector reform generally, that it’s not about the institutional architecture, it’s about the purpose: why are we here? And to step back from that, it’s about making sure people can live their best lives, get the best skills, access education on a lifelong basis. That’s going to drive a lot of change in and of itself. I’m a bit more relaxed about the structure. What I do want to see is institutions focusing on the outcomes for the citizen.”

I want to see us get a grip on the AI discourse

The rise of artificial intelligence is one area where people will need upskilling. But as AI minister, Smith will also have to deal with some of the safeguarding and ethical issues around the technology – even if he’s limited, given regulation remains reserved to Westminster.

“AI is a huge opportunity. Scotland has got the cutting-edge university research in this space, we’ve got some really innovative companies. Some of the hype is overblown – and some of it isn’t,” he says.

“What we’re setting up is a structure that’s going to support this industry, to create jobs and create the cutting-edge research that’s going to be lucrative for the companies in this space. And we need to be really open to that global industry locating in Scotland and from Scotland, expanding out and working with the rest of the world. It’s going to happen. We need to be ahead of it.”

Asked whether AI is a threat to humanity – as per recent warnings from industry insiders – Smith is unequivocal. “No, it’s not. In the same way as the printing press was disruptive, AI is disruptive. And as AI minister, I want to see us get a grip on the AI discourse. Frankly, some of the discourse we’ve seen has just been backwards.”

Does he use AI himself? “As a glorified Google search engine,” he admits, adding that he has “asked for a training course on AI, because I think I need it”. He has seen some of what the automation elements can do in his old legal profession, particularly around document management, and he’s keen to know more. “We need to make sure that we’re future-ready and upskilling people so that we can interact with it and deal with it because we get huge opportunities and we should not be afraid to change.”

Scotland’s independence has always been rooted in a wider, international construct

And he argues that on AI safety, the UK and Scotland should be following EU legislation. That, he says, is focused on privacy, human rights, and digital services.

“The idea that Scotland or the UK will come up with a regime for this is just for the birds. This is a global industry and a global technology. I would want us much more closely [aligned] with the EU legislation on this, but what we must do is make sure that we’re having a positive discussion about the opportunities,” he says.

The UK’s ongoing relationship with the EU continues to be somewhat of a sore point for Smith. Best known for his final speech in the European Parliament in which he asked them to “leave a light on” for Scotland to find its way back, he is an unabashed Europhile.

That internationalist approach stems from his own life experience, having grown up with one foot in Scotland and the other in Saudi Arabia (where his dad found work after being made redundant when Smith was young), as well as studying and working across Europe and further afield.

Despite all the travelling, he always came back to Scotland because “here’s home”. “And I’m very proudly Scottish. Obviously – you’d expect an SNP politician to be saying that. But Scotland’s independence has always been rooted in a wider, international construct… We’ve always had an international element to our politics and we need to celebrate that.”

We are speaking in the week that Andy Burnham has delivered his first speech to Labour conference as party leader, in which the prime minister committed to looking at the “different options” for closer ties to the EU. He later confirmed that could include going “all the way” and rejoining.

Smith is sceptical of how far the PM would be truly willing to go. “I fear that Andy Burnham’s going to go as far as rhetoric but not actually much else, and we’ll see what the November summit brings. We’ve engaged with that because we’ve got our priorities too, on things like Horizon Europe, Erasmus,” he says.

But, he adds, “if Andy Burnham is serious – great, cracking, he’s got a good ally in me.”