The Rise of the Botsitters
Matt, and
Niels
Featured this week:
UK workers save 12 hours a week using AI, then hand six of them straight back in what a new report calls "botsitting": feeding models context, checking outputs, cleaning up mistakes. We dug into whether Britain is behind the curve or simply further into it than anyone admits.
The abrupt suspension of Anthropic's Fable 5, pulled four days after launch on US national security grounds, prompted much UK hand-wringing and saw Keir Starmer (unsuccessfully) ask Trump for a carve-out at the G7 Summit.
Britain is deeply dependent on technology it does not own, and is only beginning to reckon with what that means.
Also this week
Bezos-backed CuspAI targets $400m at $2.6bn valuation — Cambridge materials science startup attracts Jeff Bezos's family office in one of the week's biggest UK funding signals. Read more
Lloyds hiring 300 AI specialists by September — The bank is building a dedicated agentic AI team alongside an existing 1,000-strong AI workforce. Read more
Derbyshire Police AI case triggers rape conviction reviews — A suspended detective allegedly used a chatbot to generate biased paperwork, in what may be a first-of-its-kind UK legal challenge. Read more
Brands using AI influencers without telling anyone — A Guardian investigation found no UK rules currently require advertisers to disclose when a social media influencer is AI-generated. Read more
CMA orders Google to explain UK search rankings — Publishers can now opt out of AI-generated search summaries and request proper attribution, following binding CMA requirements. Read more
