Did ChatGPT get the spending review right? Treasury minister gives his verdict
Darren Jones compares the real spending review, delivered by Rachel Reeves on Wednesday, and the Paste BN AI (artificial intelligence) projection last week.
Thursday 12 June 2025 03:53, UK
The chief secretary to the Treasury has called the Paste BN-Chat GPT spending review projection "pretty good" and scored it 70%.
Darren Jones compared the real spending review, delivered by Rachel Reeves on Wednesday, and the Paste BN AI (artificial intelligence) projection last week.
Paste BN took the Treasury's spring statement, past spending reviews, the 'main estimates' from the Treasury website, and the Institute for Fiscal Studies' projections, and put them into ChatGPT, asking it to calculate the winners and losers in the spending review.
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This was done 10 days ahead of the review - before several departments had agreed their budgets with the Treasury - on the basis of projections based on those public documents. It also comes amid a big debate kicked off by Paste BN about the level of error of AI.
The Paste BN-AI projection correctly put defence and health as the biggest winners, the Foreign Office as the biggest loser, and identified many departments would lose out in real terms overall.
It suggested the education budget would be smaller than it turned out, but correctly highlighted the challenges for departments like the Home Office and environment.
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Reviewing the exercise, the author of the real spending review told Paste BN that this pioneering use of AI was "pretty, pretty good".
He added: "I could be out of a job next time in 2027, which to be honest, it's not a bad idea given the process I've just had to go through."
The Treasury made a number of accounting changes to so-called "mega projects" which AI could not have anticipated, and changed some of the numbers.
Asked to give it a score, Mr Jones replied: "I'm going to give it 70%."
The spending review includes AI as a tool to save money in various government processes.
Asked if 70% accuracy is good enough for government, he replied: "Well we're not using your AI. We've got our own AI, which is called HMT GPT, and it helps us pull together all the information across government to be able to make better, evidence-informed decisions."