For the last two years, the UK government has been telling the British public that the country could receive an economic boost of £400 billion, thanks to AI, a figure intended to calm fears that the technology would lead to sweeping job losses and even an economic crash.
But the UK AI minister admitted last week that figure was significantly higher than the government’s actual projections after it was revealed that assessment came solely from a report commissioned by Google, and that its own estimation of AI’s economic benefit was less than a third of that £400 billion figure.n
AI minister Kanishka Narayan, answering a parliamentary question on the issue, said that AI adoption and data investment could add £55 billion to £140 billion to the UK economy by 2030, bringing the central estimate to £120 billion. But even this “more recent assessment,” he said, was a “hugely uncertain” estimate.
Narayan said the £400b figure “was drawn from a publicly available 2023 report commissioned by Google and produced by Public First,” a British consultancy firm now referred to as PF Global.
Responding to WIRED’s questions about the difference between the figures, PF Global’s head of economics, Jonathan Dupont, said the disparity was partially because of what they saw as the government’s slow adoption of AI. “AI is a very fast moving technology, and, as we learn more, we inevitably have to update the assumptions lying behind our models. Compared to our older model, the numbers the government uses assume a much slower rate of adoption than looked possible back in our model that was created in 2023.”
Government departments and agencies used Google’s £400 billion figure for almost two years, under two governments. Ministers have had the lower estimate since at least November 2025, almost a year before this week’s admission, yet Skills England, a government agency responsible for apprenticeships, was still publishing the old figure four months later.
Nayaran’s parliamentary answer is the first recorded evidence WIRED could find of the government setting the two numbers side by side, or saying that the report was commissioned by Google. The answer did not withdraw the £400 billion figure or say it had been wrong.
Dame Chi Onwurah, the Labour MP who chairs the Commons Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, told WIRED: “The government is right to promote the potential for technology like AI to improve public services. However, these reports highlight one of the central barriers to delivering the digital transformation of public services my committee has identified: hype.