Neither of the UK’s main political parties is saying anything especially interesting about education. In an economy chronically short of skills – more than ten million people lack the skills they need to do their jobs effectively – that’s odd. The education cupboard is not entirely bare. Last week saw the latest instalment of the Prime Minister’s programme to support maths education to age 18. And a big number – more than £500 million – is being bunged at the UK’s numeracy problem through the government’s Multiply programme. This maths initiative has had its critics but, as vice-chair of the charity National Numeracy, I am not one of them. We are an innumerate nation: in the case of roughly eight million of us, our maths is no better than that of a primary-school child. Number anxiety starts in early years and typically lasts a lifetime. But we are also kidding ourselves if we think educational redemption lies in Stem (science, technology, engineering and maths) subjects alone. The arts and humanities have been starved of resources for many years. Some course numbers are down 40-50 per cent. This makes no economic sense. Indeed, these are just the set of skills needed in the 21st century to arrest the march of the robots (on which more below). At the RSA’s President’s lecture last week, Sir Peter Bazalgette said the A (for arts) needs to be hard-wired into the Stem subjects. The first industrial revolution was powered by steam. To make a success of the fourth industrial revolution we will need a new age of Steam.

Talking of creativity, can an AI chatbot be creative? Like many people, I have watched the emergence of ChatGPT (the OpenAI chatbot) with a combination of awe and foreboding. Scarcely a day passes without an astonishing new feat being reported. Last week, I heard ChatGPT had achieved 96 per cent in an A-level maths exam with the help of an algo add-on. Maybe Rishi could have saved himself a few quid on Multiply after all? And maybe my son (whose A-level maths exams are looming large) could have saved himself hours of torture? Historically, the shock and awe of new technologies has tended to wear off over time. Google search, once magical, is now meh. Smartphones, once transformative, are now workaday. But might it be different this time? Could technological shock and awe be here to stay? I suspect so. Some scientists believe we are fast approaching a singularity – the point where AI surpasses human intelligence in all tasks. The future would then be beyond our cognitive compass, not just unknown but unknowable for humans. That future would be shaped not by biology (as in our distant past) or neurology (as in our recent past) but technology. Yikes.

It gets worse. Many informed people expect us to accelerate towards the singularity as connectivity and information processing grows exponentially. If so, technological shock and awe is set to come thicker and faster over time. That sense of surprise and magic, but also uncertainty and loss of control, may keep on rising. Perhaps it is fear of that which is causing thousands of people to sign open letters asking for the pause button to be pressed on AI.

Those signing the letters may as well ask for a pause in the planet’s rotation. ChatGPT is far from perfect. Often it appears neither smart nor wise. It can make things up – words, concepts, publications. And if you type the same request into it, you will often get different answers. But, contrary to some commentary, this is not a design flaw. Making things up and experimenting with answers is central to generative AI. And, not coincidentally, it is also a hallmark of human imagination. In other words, like it or not, the creative chatbot is already upon us. And far from being a counsel of despair, the trick will be to use it to nurture our own creative capacity.

Which sector of the UK economy comprises more than 20 million workers? Give up? It is the volunteering sector. That number of us volunteer each year across the UK, whether on a formal or informal basis. It is simply staggering. Anyone who tells you the UK is not a kind, civic-minded society should reflect on those numbers. Most of this activity goes unrecorded in our official measures of success, such as GDP statistics. But being an economist, I can’t help putting pound signs next to things. When I did so for volunteering a few years ago, I rather surprised myself by finding it created around £200 billion of value each year in the UK. That’s eleven zeros, for those yet to take their Multiply module, or the annual spending on defence and the NHS combined. However, the numbers of people volunteering in the UK has been falling over the past few years, another of the casualties of the Covid and cost-of-living crises. But help is at hand – and Big Help at that. Monday 8 May – the coronation weekend – marks Big Help Out day, a drive to get as many people as possible to volunteer in their communities. What a fabulous coronation legacy it would be if the Big Help Out could turn the retreating tide of volunteering.

In the digital desert of emails, texts and WhatsApps, a handwritten letter is an oasis. So the highlight of last week for me was receiving a handwritten letter from Sir David Attenborough. It didn’t matter that Sir David was apologetically informing me he was unable to make my conference. I will treasure it.