Rishi Sunak is giving advice to CEOs on AI. Here are his golden rules

There was a simple narrative about Rishi Sunak when he was defeated in the U.K. general election of 2024. The Stanford MBA graduate and former Goldman Sachs analyst would quit Parliament, leave the U.K., and hotfoot it to California for lucrative roles toward the top of some hyperscaler or other. Sunak kept insisting it wasn’t true, despite the fact he often wore regulation Silicon Valley white trainers. Few people believed him. 

Two years later, and Sunak has confounded the skeptics. He is still a Member of Parliament for a rural constituency in the north of England (AI use for dairy farmers is one of his specialties). And although he is now an advisor to Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, and Anthropic, his work is resolutely anchored in the U.K. The Labour government is regularly in touch. 

“My work with the two technology companies has left me even more convinced, not just about how much AI is going to change, but how quickly it’s going to change things, too,” Sunak told a Goldman Sachs conference for small businesses held in Birmingham, England’s second city 100 miles north of London. 

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“It’s not just about transforming our economy—as much as ...