YesGeorge Osborne getting a new job isn’t really news. Since leaving frontline politics, the former Chancellor has served as chairman of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, edited (not entirely successfully) the Evening Standard, advised asset manager BlackRock, joined boutique advisory firm Robbie Warshaw, and was appointed chairman of British Museum and took on other roles, including advising crypto firm Coinbase. Oh, and like any white person of a certain age, he co-hosts a political podcast.
But Osborne’s latest job is the most eye-opening of all – and it’s an alarming sign of what’s to come. The creator of ChatGPT becomes OpenAI The latest organization to employ OsborneHe will run OpenAI for Countries, a unit tasked with working directly with governments while expanding the company’s Stargate datacenter program beyond the US, at least it was announced with a tweetInstead of a LinkedIn post.
The tweet prompted jokes, as did Osborne’s solo attempt to boost lagging employment figures due to his austerity policies as Chancellor. But this is a serious moment, because it’s another sign that the biggest AI companies are starting to behave less like normal companies and more like quasi-governments. They are negotiating “national” partnerships, introducing a values-based approach to “democratic AI” and appointing former senior politicians as their diplomatic corps. This is a similar path to what we have seen from other industries including oil, pharma and defense over the past decades – which is why it is important to identify and try to address the risks before AI companies repeat the same moves.
The initiative Osborne is leading, OpenAI for Countries, does exactly what it says on the tin. It is designed to embed OpenAI’s models and infrastructure inside the machinery of states, which have become an invaluable, tireless part of how we run our lives. OpenAI is in talks with around 50 countries to provide them with critical national infrastructure. Would you welcome Osborne being put in that role rather than a tech executive, it’s like a Hobson’s choice: who do you distrust the least? But it is a sign of how tech companies view their position in society that they are hiring such high-powered people for these roles.
Osborne isn’t the first to embrace branded hoodies and the Silicon Valley lifestyle. His fellow coalition government director Nick Clegg rose to prominence as META’s head of global affairs. At the time of his initial appointment as vice president at Facebook in 2018, his appointment was perceived as a PR move – a big name move to help the company deal with scandals and investigations. But it signaled that platforms have become political actors, whether they like it or not. Industry’s excessive spending on lobbyists (€151 million in Europe alone at last count) Supporting political animals is indicative of what is at stake. The numbers involved also give an indication of the scale of the prize tech companies are seeing: The 10 largest Big Tech companies now spend more than the 10 largest companies in the pharma, finance, and automotive industries combined.
The former chancellor is also not the first former controller of Britain’s public funds to be useful to big tech. In October this year, Rishi Sunak takes up advisory roles with Microsoft and AI firm Anthropicless than two years after he called AI Security Summit at Bletchley ParkAt least Sunak already had a regulation hoodie in his wardrobe,
You can read these moves in two ways. The generous interpretation is that these companies are hedging: trying to anticipate technology regulation and make sure they understand it. The more cynical interpretation is that they are attempting to shape the geopolitical narrative around AI from inside the machine, hiring former leaders less for their institutional muscle memory and technical insight than for their networks.
Either way, it leaves democracies with a problem. Governments are expected to set the rules of the road. But the tech companies they have to regulate are establishing their foothold in different countries on different scales. When Sunak called the Bletchley Park summit, it was notable that he turned to the interviewer to quiz Elon Musk sitting on the stage, while Musk dominated the discourse.
Now is the time to recognize that these companies are acting like political actors. This means that it is time for them to be treated like political actors. We need more transparency: Countries that have signed OpenAI agreements and governments must by default publish details of their participation. We must ask more questions about dependence on infrastructure. Governments love Stargate-style investments in their countries, and want to be able to wear a hard hat, cut a ribbon, and issue a press release. But if they are indeed a new layer of the national backbone, they should be studied more closely – as if they were utilities rather than in the good graces of startup-style mysticism.
The more tech companies start behaving like politicians and global leaders, the more we need to treat them the same. It doesn’t mean respect; This means more suspicion and journalistic inquiry.
