Miguel Afonso Caetano"In dozens of interviews with current and former government officials and advisers, technologists and MPs – most of whom asked not to be named, in order to speak freely – I have been told about a quiet handing over of control in the frameworks of advice, intelligence and decision-making that underlie every government decision. This is not just a simple software upgrade. Large language models (LLMs), the software behind AI program such as ChatGPT, are built to produce answers that will be accepted by users – not to calculate, but to convince. This highly persuasive software, built primarily overseas, is being handed an unknown amount of political power.
In almost every interview conducted for this piece, I asked whether it was paranoid to suggest that the wholesale adoption of AI by our government, public services and wider economy is handing power to models built in the US and China. Even the most optimistic AI advocates agreed it was a reasonable argument. At a technology conference last year, I spoke to a person who had been involved at the highest level in the government’s use of AI. I asked if it worried them that foundational models could reflect the politics of the people who control them – people who have very different political ideas to our elected leaders. My concerns were not brushed off. This person told me about a power struggle between the engineers building AI models, the plutocrats who own them and the politicians who seek to control them. Far from the noise of the public debate, a battle is being fought that could have lasting implications for our politics. “Make no mistake,” this person told me. “This is a war.”"
https://www.newstatesman.com/technology/2026/04/the-silent-coup
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