Artificial intelligence (AI) could have a bigger impact on Britain than the industrial revolution, according to deputy prime minister Oliver Dowden.

In an interview with The Times newspaper, Dowden said that the AI could speed up “boring” parts of jobs, but could also pose a significant threat to organisations.

“This is a total revolution that is coming. It’s going to totally transform almost all elements of life over the coming years,” Dowden told The Times. “It is much faster than other revolutions that we’ve seen and much more extensive, whether that’s the invention of the internal combustion engine or the industrial revolution.”

He added AI would allow governments to make faster decisions: “The thing that AI right now does really well, it takes massive amounts of information from datasets in different places and enables you to get to a point where you can make decisions.

“Ministers are never going to outsource to AI the making of decisions. But all of the work that goes into getting to that point . . . You can use AI to speed it up.”

Dowden however warned that AI can help people to hack systems and “do disruptive things.”

“Disaffected people exist already. Tie them in with AI, and that enhances, that proliferates, the kind of things that they can do. We need to be careful not to overstate these things and do it on an evidential basis, but there is the risk there that has to be addressed,” Dowden said.

His comments follow the news that the electoral commission was hit by a complex cyber-attack during which hackers gained access to copies of electoral registers. The UK elections watchdog said that the incident was identified in October 2022 after suspicious activity was detected on its systems.

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