Speeches by Baldwin.

“I reiterate the interest that I have met the professor before, when he was principal of my alma mater. I am very interested in taking up the theme of AI and how you see that combining with the power of quantum computing potentially to undermine the encryption that supports the whole financial sector. What are your thou…”

“I am not sure whether I feel more or less worried than I did at the beginning of the session, but thank you.”

“We have obviously had a really fascinating afternoon and a lot of subjects have been covered, but I am going to try to cover an eclectic bunch of things that have not been so far. The first question is, to what extent are your organisations using AI to reduce the cost of regulation, so that you are reducing your own co…”

“Is that something we should be worried about in the context of artificial intelligence additionally being a structural problem for the UK?”

“That does not sound very reassuring. May I ask one final question on a slightly different topic? With protectionism and nationalism having been very prominent recently, to what extent does data fall into the area where we should worry about barriers being put in place for the flow of data?”

“Is your back-up plan pen and paper, as the National Cyber Security Centre recommended this week?”

“But the risk of the Bank of England, for example, being hacked and undermining our financial confidence as a country is so significant, Mr Mutton, that it must keep you up at night.”

“Thank you. Obviously, one of the risks we touched on is the cyber risk and the stress tests for industry participants. Clearly, one of the biggest worries is that bad actors get hold of some of the data, particularly now we are using so much more facial recognition and there are those databases and things like that. On…”

“You have made a start and it sounds like there are more use cases to come, and more training. And at the Bank, Mr Mutton?”

“Thank you. Changing subject, the Governor and the FPC recently made a statement about the valuation of AI stocks and the risk of a severe correction. Does that outweigh any of the other risks we have talked about today?”

“Or the future purchasers of them, yes.”

“But do you all accept that since last year’s Budget there have been reports from New World Wealth, the Adam Smith Institute, the Institute of Economic Affairs, Oxford Economics, the Centre for Economics and Business Research—a range of different organisations—all saying that people with wealth have left the UK? Do you …”

“With other inheritance taxes, people have known about the seven-year rule, but because farmers were exempt from that, there are farmers who are now well into their 70s and 80s who have not done it. Again, that seems to be fundamentally unfair.”

“Food security for the United Kingdom.”

“Would you all recommend that the Chancellor change the rules to reflect that? Are you all happy with those recommendations?”

“One question on that. In terms of public policies, it is clearly important that the UK has the ability to grow food. That is at the heart of this, because if you, who are all very economically rational people, suddenly say, “Well, there are more productive uses of that land,” we would lose the ability to produce food. …”

“Finally, should stamp duty be reformed?”

“Does everyone else agree with that?”

“On their worldwide assets?”

“You do not know. Are there any aspects of the changes that the Chancellor brought in last year that, if reviewed and changed, would stop something that is as yet unquantified but seems to be a reduction in potential future tax revenues accruing to the UK economy?”