RACHEL REEVES has done a great deal of harm to the British economy. There is no guarantee that her successor as chancellor will be any better but the government must do more to help small businesses, many of which happen to be owned by British Asians.
We learned from the weekend papers that “the British historian Anthony Seldon has written more than 50 books, including the biographies of John Major, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. His latest volume, on Rishi Sunak, will come out this summer.”
Rishi has urged small businesses to embrace AI. In his Sunday Times (28) column, the former prime minister said: “My post-Downing Street life has made me even more convinced that artificial intelligence will transform every aspect of our economy and society. Our grandchildren will ask us about the world before AI in the same way our children question our parents on what life was like before the internet and the mobile phone. I advise two technology firms, Microsoft and Anthropic, and what I see only strengthens my conviction about the speed at which major change is coming.”
In India, there is great enthusiasm about AI, but in Britain it is just the opposite. But AI is already here.
Rishi pointed out: “At those firms that have most successfully adopted AI, the chief executive has brought their team with them. If your workforce suspect that you just want to use AI to automate their role and shrink headcount, they’ll be wary of it – and not unreasonably so. Instead, you have to show staff that it can take some of the administrative burden off them, freeing up their time to concentrate on the parts of their job that they most enjoy and where they add the most value. When they see that AI can take care of the hassle of sending an invoice or putting together a formal quote, they’ll be converted.”
Rishi concluded: “We can’t let our small businesses go the way of the hand loom. My advice to them would be this: lift your eyes from the mess at Westminster and concentrate on what you can control: getting everyday AI to work for you.”
