But Guildford admitted this week that this statement was in fact nonsense. As he acknowledged in a letter on January 12: “I [recently] became aware that the incorrect result regarding the match between West Ham and Maccabi Tel Aviv arose as a result of the use of Microsoft Co Pilot.
He had no intention of misleading anyone, he added, saying that “until Friday afternoon [I] understood that the West Ham match had only been identified through the use of Google.
This has made the bad situation even worse. Today, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood made a lengthy statement in the House of Commons about the case in which she threw Guildford under the bus and walked over him backwards five or six times.
Home Affairs Minister Shabana Mahmood makes a statement in Parliament today.
Home Affairs Minister Shabana Mahmood makes a statement in Parliament today.
Mahmood blamed the ban on police “confirmation bias”. She said the Amsterdam stories they used were “exaggerated or simply not true.” And she highlighted the fact that Guildford claimed that “AI tools were not used to prepare intelligence reports” but that “AI hallucination” was now said to be responsible.
The whole thing was a “failure of leadership”, and Guildford “no longer has my confidence”, she said.
Everyone in Britain seems to agree on this last bit. Conservatives also want Guildford to leave, with party leaders calling for his resignation. MP Nick Timothy has been ranting on X for days about the issue, especially about the fact that hallucination-sensitive AI tools are used to make safety decisions.
“More details on the abuse of AI by police,” he wrote today. “Not only did they deny it to the Home Affairs Committee. They also denied it in FOI requests. They said they have no AI policy. So officers are using a new, unreliable technology for sensitive purposes, without training or rules.”
