When it comes to science and technology, Prime Minister Andy Burnham is wrong to put all of our eggs in the AI basket.

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One of his first acts in the job was to scrap the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) and fold it into the Department of Business and Trade (DBT), where competing priorities now range from steel to retail to space technologies.

In the same stroke, Mr Burnham promoted our AI Minister, previously a portfolio role within DSIT, to a cabinet position. In effect, he has demoted the priority of science and tech as a whole – and elevated a single technology in its place.

That’s a bad trade-off, in my opinion. He should reverse the decision, drop any attempt to pick technology “winners”, and reinstate investment in the very foundations of our science and technology ecosystem, so that we can innovate in and capitalise on any technology of today, and by extension, tomorrow.

No matter how important AI is, it is only one........

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