My standard answer to "can AI save the state loads of money" is "did the internet save the state loads of money?"My standard answer to "can AI save the state loads of money" is "did the internet save the state loads of money?"

Ah, now that is an interesting question. GDS saved the state a lot of money. I think I did about £5bn of it myself and some of the services could only work thanks to the Internet, like voter registration. But much of the savings came from simply not outsourcing everything to incompetent contractors

The issue is that, while "technology is the main driver of healthcare cost increases, not ageing" is broadly the academic consensus, it really hasn't been internalised by policy makers. Couple that with the Treasury brain thinking that everything has to be about financial savings...

Do you ever get the feeling that technology that actually >reduces< total demand for workers is like seeking the philosophers stone?

Depends on the counterfactual you use, right? Without the internet, the same money we spend today would buy fewer/(even) worse services; or we would spend a lot more on the same levels as today. (Or we’d have a smaller state – did the internet preserve the current model?) Tech changes constraints.

Oh I dunno, I used AI at work for the first time recently, where it, surprisingly, rewrote a mild commendation into a longer commendation incorporating the company's values. Still not quite sure it was a valuable use of company resources but then I didn't ask it to do that.

I don’t think anyone ever really tested that question other than in isolation. Capitalism got in the way.

It should have?

Technology helps the NHS save lives. Lives cost the NHS money.

Obviously it has.