AI Cure-All: The British Government Discovers Magic Beans Worth £45 Billion

In a landmark move that’s been described as “revolutionary”, “visionary”, and “suspiciously vague”, the UK government has announced plans to 'mainline AI' directly into the bloodstream of public services. The result? A miraculous £45 billion in savings; roughly the GDP of a small country, or your correspondents currently ongoing divorce settlement.

The ministerial document, written in a dialect known only to civil servants and their favoured consulting firms, outlines how this windfall will be achieved. Some highlights include:

• Replacing civil servants with chatbots trained on the Wikipedia entry on “How to be polite”.
• AI-powered planning systems for infrastructure that predict future potholes but are unable to fix any from the past decade.
• An automated judicial system trialling a new “Minority Report” pilot where AI predicts crimes, then loses the report in a SharePoint folder.

One insider described the plan as “ambitious” and “approximately 12% feasible”.

While critics have pointed out that the government has a history of software projects that never arrive, or if they do; crashing under the weight of a user logging in. Officials remain quietly confident. “This time it’s different,” said a spokesperson. “We’ve put the words ‘AI’ and ‘blockchain’ in the same sentence. That’s innovation.”