UK Officials Said AI Would Add £400 Billion to the Economy. That Figure Mainly Came From Google

For nearly two years, UK ministers cited a £400 billion AI-driven boost to the British economy as reassurance against fears of mass job losses and an economic crash. Last week, AI minister Kanishka Narayan told Parliament that figure came solely from a 2023 report commissioned by Google and produced by consultancy Public First — now called PF Global — and that the government's own assessment of AI's benefit was less than a third as large.

Answering a parliamentary question, Narayan said AI adoption and data investment could add between £55 billion and £140 billion to the UK economy by 2030, with a central estimate of £120 billion. He described even that more recent projection as a "hugely uncertain" estimate, and did not withdraw the £400 billion figure or declare it wrong. This was the first recorded instance WIRED found of the government placing the two numbers side by side, or disclosing that the Google-commissioned report was the source of the larger one.

The discrepancy has been visible for some time. Government departments and agencies used the Google figure across two successive governments. Ministers have held the lower estimate since at least November 2025, yet Skills England, the agency overseeing apprenticeships, was still publishing the old number four months later. Lord Holmes of Richmond, who asked about the figure's origins in January 2025 and received no response, said it would have been better for the government to clarify much sooner and more directly.

PF Global attributed part of the gap to slower-than-expected uptake. Head of economics Jonathan Dupont said the technology moves fast enough that model assumptions must be updated, and that the government's numbers assume a much slower adoption rate than his firm's 2023 model considered possible. The firm added that, given observed adoption, its own central estimate for value realized by 2030 now sits much closer to the government's figure, with growth expected to ramp up afterward. It pointed to top-down adoption and integration into civil service workflows as routes to faster take-up.

Dame Chi Onwurah, chair of the Commons Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, said overstating AI's benefits risks undermining the case for change, identifying hype as a central barrier to digital transformation of public services and calling for realism and transparency about potential savings.

What remains unresolved is whether the £400 billion number will be formally retired or kept in circulation alongside the lower range, and whether departments still relying on it will be forced to update. The larger open question is whether UK adoption actually accelerates enough to close the gap between the two estimates by 2030 — a target PF Global now concedes depends on ramp-up that has not yet materialized.