“AI can make us more human, not less,” David Lammy told the OpenAI Frontiers conference in London on 23 October, pitching artificial intelligence as a practical fix for stretched frontline services rather than a Silicon Valley sales pitch. The Deputy Prime Minister confirmed a wider rollout of Justice Transcribe across the Probation Service and framed AI as a way to cut waits, reduce errors and deliver better outcomes.

Lammy said the Ministry of Justice will equip a further 1,000 probation officers with the transcription tool, which automatically records and writes up supervision sessions so staff can focus on risk and rehabilitation. The MoJ estimates this will save around 240,000 days of admin a year - roughly the workload of 1,000 frontline staff.

The other immediate change is about where data lives. OpenAI will offer UK data residency from this week, allowing customers to keep information on servers in Britain - available via the API platform, ChatGPT Enterprise and ChatGPT Edu. For public bodies and NHS trusts, that addresses a major barrier to adoption. Reuters reports the option begins on Friday 24 October.

For the North, the signal is clear: the government wants AI jobs and infrastructure outside the M25. In September ministers named the North East an AI Growth Zone centred on Blyth and Cobalt Park, with officials billing “thousands of jobs” and up to £30bn of private investment as part of the UK–US Tech Prosperity Deal.

DSIT’s announcement put real names to it: British firm Nscale alongside OpenAI and Nvidia on new compute in North Tyneside, and a £10bn data centre campus at Cambois near Blyth already in train. Local leaders say more than 5,000 roles are expected over time, from construction to data engineering.

This sits within a wider UK–US tech pact that unlocked a wave of corporate commitments last month. Reuters valued the package at about £31bn, with Nvidia set to deploy large GPU capacity across the UK and other giants pledging new data centres and research. Whatever the headline number, the direction of travel is expansion outside London - and the North East is first out of the blocks.

On health, the speech highlighted tools already at work. NICE has conditionally recommended DERM - an AI system for assessing skin lesions - for use in the urgent suspected skin cancer pathway for the next three years while more evidence is gathered. NHS England says it can free capacity by safely discharging benign cases; Greater Manchester trusts, including Bolton and Manchester University NHS FT, are among those using it.

For probation teams facing high caseloads, speech-to-text is more than a gadget. Early MoJ pilots show large cuts in note‑taking time and better records, with staff reporting stronger engagement when they’re not heads‑down typing. Lammy’s expansion aims to bottle that up and spread it nationally.

Inside Whitehall, the government is also leaning on an in‑house tool called Consult to sift consultation responses. DSIT says the system has matched human accuracy at a fraction of the time and cost, suggesting savings of around 75,000 staff days a year across 500 consultations. That’s not glamorous, but it is exactly the kind of grunt work that chokes policy delivery.

Data hosting in the UK should make adoption easier for councils, NHS trusts and police forces that have sat on the fence over privacy and sovereignty. OpenAI says UK data residency covers its API, ChatGPT Enterprise and Edu; the government stresses that data kept here sits under British law and oversight - the point many public bodies needed to hear.

There are trade‑offs to watch. Campaigners and industry alike warn that datacentres need power and water. Plans for Culham in Oxfordshire - the pilot AI Growth Zone - have already drawn scrutiny over resource use, while analysts flag grid capacity as a national constraint. In Northumberland, QTS says its Cambois campus will use a closed‑loop water system to limit demand. The North will need those standards baked in from day one.

What happens next is mostly execution. OpenAI’s UK data residency begins this week; the MoJ’s transcription kit is scaling; and the North East taskforce is pushing to get sites in Cambois and Cobalt Park live quickly. If ministers want the public to buy into AI, the test here is simple: shorter NHS waits, safer streets and good Northern jobs. Deliver that, and the rest follows.