It's a 'courageous' decision, Minister!

Government's new AI tools to be named after Sir Humphrey...

comedy He’s the smooth-talking, but Machiavellian, civil servant whose mission in life is to thwart the ambitions of his minister.

So it has raised eyebrows that the government’s new AI tools are to be named after Sir Humphrey Appleby, the late Nigel Hawthorne’s scheming character in Yes, Minister.

Science and technology secretary Peter Kyle will announce the Humphrey suite of tipples today, including generative AI models - which take large amounts of information and summarises it in a more digestible format for the civil service.

But Tim Flagg, chief operating officer of trade body UKAI, said: ’Humphrey for me is a name which is very associated with the Machiavellian character from Yes, Minister.

‘That immediately makes people who aren't in that central Whitehall office think that this is something which is not going to be empowering and not going to be helping them.’

However, he said: ‘I think the government is doing the right thing. They do have some good developers - I have every confidence they are going to be creating a great product.’

Although, of course, one thing Sir Humphrey could never be accused of doing is summarising any situation with fewer words than necessary...

Published: 21 Jan 2025