Plan to ‘unleash AI’ across UK revealed

The government is to set out plans to use artificial intelligence (AI) across the UK to boost growth and deliver public services more efficiently.

The AI Opportunities Action Plan being announced on Monday will be backed by leading tech firms, which are said to have committed £14bn towards various projects, creating 13,250 jobs, the government said.

It includes plans for growth zones where development will be focused, and the technology will be used to help tackle issues such as potholes.

“I want to make sure that it benefits everyone from every background, that it benefits every community, from every part of the UK,” Science and Technology Secretary Peter Kyle told the BBC.

Last summer, the government tasked AI adviser Matt Clifford with creating a UK action plan for artificial intelligence.

He came back with 50 recommendations which are now being implemented.

One of these is for the UK to invest in a new supercomputer to boost computing power. This marks a change in strategy as the Labour government had ditched a supercomputer at Edinburgh University planned by the previous government.

Shadow science secretary Alan Mak said Labour was “delivering analogue government in a digital age”.

The push towards AI is seen as way of cutting down on public spending, but Mak accused Labour of undermining this goal with its economic policies.

“Labour’s economic mismanagement and uninspiring plan will mean Britain is left behind,” he said.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said AI “will drive incredible change” in the country and “has the potential to transform the lives of working people”.

“Our plan will make Britain the world leader,” Sir Keir said.

Kyle told the BBC there was no reason why the UK could not create tech companies on the same scale as Google, Amazon, and Apple.

“At the moment, we don’t have any frontier conceptual, cutting-edge companies that are British-owned. We have DeepMind, which started in Britain but is now American-owned,” he said.

“Now we want to keep all of those ingredients that enable that kind of scale of innovation and investment to exist in Britain.”

DeepMind created technology enabling computers to play video and board games.

It was founded by three students at University College London before being acquired by Google.

Using figures from the International Monetary Fund, the government estimates that fully embracing AI could be worth up to an average £47bn to the UK each year over a decade.

• AI will be used by the public sector to enable its workers to spend less time doing admin and more time delivering services.
• Several “AI Growth Zones” around the UK will be created, involving big building projects and new jobs.
• AI will be fed through cameras around the country to inspect roads and spot potholes that need fixing.
• Teachers and small business owners were highlighted as two groups that could start using AI for things like faster planning and record-keeping.
• AI is already being used in UK hospitals for important tasks such as diagnosing cancer more quickly and it will continue to be used to support the NHS.

Cabinet Office minister Pat McFadden said “we’re only at the foothills of this” and AI was a developing technology.

He said a government-developed AI teaching assistant had been used by about 30,000 teachers in England so far.

“It saves teachers about three-and-half hours a week – gives them their Sunday evening back, if you like, in terms of lesson preparation and classroom preparation,” he told BBC Breakfast.

McFadden said AI applications used by the health service can detect some cancers earlier which are not detectable by the human eye.

However he acknowledged AI was “not perfect” after Apple faced calls to withdraw a controversial feature that generated inaccurate news alerts on its latest iPhones.

“We’ve got to have an eye on safety as well as opportunity,” McFadden said.

“The truth is, you can’t just opt out of this. Or if you do, you’re just going to see it developed elsewhere.”

Tech companies Vantage Data Centres, Nscale, and Kyndryl have committed £14bn to build the relevant AI infrastructure in the UK.

This is in addition to the £25bn AI investment announced at the International Investment Summit.

Vantage Data Centres is working on building one of Europe’s largest data centre campuses in Wales.

Kyndryl will create up to 1,000 AI-related jobs in Liverpool over the next three years, forming a new tech hub.

Nscale has signed a contract to build an AI data centre in Loughton, Essex, by 2026.

The government says AI Growth Zones will be set up across the UK, with speedy planning proposals in place to create new infrastructure.

The first of these will be in Culham, Oxfordshire and more will be announced this summer with a focus on de-industrialised areas.

“I want to find parts of the country where there is a real need for the jobs of the future because the jobs of the past have already started to dwindle and utilise the fact that there is often very good grid connections in those areas which can supply an excess of energy currently,” Kyle said.

Other parts of the plan include a new National Data Library to safely secure public data and an AI Energy Council led by Kyle and Energy Secretary Ed Miliband which will focus on the energy demands of the technology.