I have spent time recently in both the City of London and its trendy neighbour Shoreditch, and have been struck by their differences.
While the pillars holding up the Bank of England hark all the way back to the Roman Empire, Shoreditch tells a more modern story; one of tech startups, pop-up offices, and 24/7 coffee and juice bars.
This contrast between two adjoining areas of London is particularly stark because they need to work hand in hand as the UK seeks to build its already strong backbone of science and tech research into unicorns that can have a real impact on our economy.
The fact that Arm, one of Britain’s key tech success stories, chose to pursue an IPO on the US Nasdaq was seen by many as proof that the City is disconnected from the tech sector.
It’s a question Michael Mainelli, the 695th Lord Mayor of London, gets asked a lot as he travels the world, promoting and representing the Square Mile.
During our chat for the UKTN Podcast, he tells me that he “gets it in the neck” about two things – Brexit and the London Stock Exchange.
He had no influence over Brexit and points out that he has no control over the London Stock Exchange either. “It’s a private company, I can’t tell it what to do”, he says, adding that he doesn’t think it is the role of government to interfere in how it is run.
I went into my chat with him fairly sceptical about the role. I felt, like the City itself, the Lord Mayor was all about history and tradition – the gold coach-led parades and the regalia of office, all style with little substance beyond it.
But actually I was wrong.
In fact, this very oldest of posts – the City has been voting in representatives since the 12th century – is actively involved in very 21st-century concerns.
Mainelli is perhaps the only mayor in the world to have built what he describes as a “moderately large neural network” while at Harvard in the 1970s, and he is pretty dismissive of the government’s sudden attempts to get involved in regulating AI in the wake of ChatGPT.
He accuses them of not doing their homework and says existing certification standards can do a good job of providing accreditation of AI systems.
He is also involved in designing professional courses on AI ethics which has so far been taken by people in more than 500 organisations around the world.
And, it would seem, the influence of the Lord Mayor reached beyond Earth too – another of his initiatives is to create surety bonds for space junk. The aim is that if the increasing number of firms aiming to have a presence in space don’t clear up their mess, insurers will.
His predecessor, Nick Lyons, was actively involved in the Mansion House reforms, which have been widely welcomed by the startup community as a way of freeing up capital to improve both our pension pots and our entrepreneurial scene.
For his year in office, Mainelli wants to move away from the idea that the City is all about finance. Instead, he sees it as a global hub for problem-solving, whether that be grappling with the UN’s sustainability goals or providing a framework for AI ethics.
He points out that a third of the City is made up of people from the world of science, tech and engineering, with 24,000 SMESs which he says accounts for the vast majority of businesses in the City.
But of course history is never far away either and the area also has a long tradition of hosting many of Europe’s most eminent thinkers and scientists, including Erasmus who, according to Mainelli, was something of a rogue and failed to pay his wine bill.
I won’t be emulating that but I will see the Square Mile in a slightly different way next time I wander through its historic and strangely named alleyways.
The post From AI to space, London’s Lord Mayor brings moderninity to old post appeared first on UKTN.