Well, well, well. It transpires that civil servants working across Whitehall are turning to artificial intelligence to figure out how different policy proposals will be received by their real government ministers. Mandarins from the Department for Education, the Home Office and even the Cabinet Office have been clocked signing up to software that enables them to chat with and test new ideas on AI ‘clones’ of senior politicians – before they take them to their human equivalents. How very interesting…
Civil servants working across Whitehall are turning to artificial intelligence to figure out how different policy proposals will be received by their real government ministers.
The new tech, created by Nostrada.ai, creates AI replicas of politicians by compiling their digital and parliamentary footprint – including every social media post they’ve made, quotes from government press releases and every single word they’ve said in parliament. The new gizmo then uses this information to allow users to chat with AI ministers, forecast policy outcomes and even test the reactions of these artificially engineered politicians to new proposals. While it currently has a UK government focus, there are plans to expand the software to make ‘digital clones’ of foreign governments and leaders. The tech start-up is already working on a US version, to create simulations of members of Donald Trump’s administration. Yet no matter how advanced, Mr S isn’t quite sure that any technology would be able to predict The Donald’s next moves…
Yet while UK mandarins are busy familiarising themselves with the software, north of the border Scottish civil servants are being warned off AI. As revealed by the Herald newspaper, new Scottish government guidance has warned staff not to discuss confidential policy information with AI such as ChatGPT, Deepseek or Twitter’s Grok. ‘Do not share anything you would not be happy to share with a member of the public,’ it orders, instructing: ‘Do not use terms which could infer future government policy or thinking in generative AI tools.’ While the guidance may halt the Nostrada’s ambitions of expanding into Caledonia, Steerpike isn’t quite sure how many Scottish civil servants would want a John Swinney clone anyway…
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