Technology Secretary Peter Kyle has launched a flagship strategy laying out Britain’s approach to capitalising on AI, but what does it actually mean?
The government-commissioned plan from tech entrepreneur and AI advisor Matt Clifford declared itself as “unapologetic in its ambition”, promising faster developments in infrastructure, a massive push for public and private sector adoption and ensuring Britain remains a leading hub for AI development.
Here are all the key points in the AI Opportunities Action Plan
Data centres and AI infrastructure
To support the UK’s ability to meet the resource-intensive demands of the technology, the plan has recommended major investments into foundational infrastructure.
AI requires data centres to train and run models and while the plan acknowledged the UK will only need to own or operate a “fraction” of the compute facilities that the technology requires, it said “countries that enable the build out of AI infrastructure will reap benefits through increased economic growth”.
The plan lays out a three-pronged approach to protecting Britain’s access to essential compute power.
First, through state-owned facilities that will support academic research, domestic AI startups and the use of AI in public services. This will be the “smallest component of the UK’s overall compute portfolio”.
Next, through privately owned compute facilities based in the UK. This includes the recently opened data centres in London and Crawley by US cloud firm CoreWeave.
Finally, through international compute access via reciprocal partnerships that could be supported by the UK’s inclusion in collective projects such as EuroHPC Joint Undertaking.
To secure this essential supply of computing power, the plan urged the government to establish ‘AI Growth Zones’, areas in which the planning process for data centre construction is simplified and sped up.
Utilising datasets
The plan also recommends putting to use the UK’s supply of priceless data.
As part of this, it suggested utilising existing data sets in areas such as scientific research to provide greater content for AI models.
During its election campaign, Labour said it would establish a National Data Library to “bring together existing research programmes and help deliver data-driven public services”.
The action plan supported this pledge and called for it to include at least five high-impact public data sets that could be made available to AI researchers. Preceding this will be the publishing of guidelines and best practices for releasing open government datasets for AI training.
Guidelines will include a clearly defined position on the legality of training AI on copyrighted data.
The push for adoption
The plan calls for a more aggressive approach to encourage AI adoption in the public and private sectors.
Clifford argues that while there have already been successful uses of AI, they have generally been small-scale and siloed.
Therefore, the government has been advised to massively increase the amount of AI use case pilots across sectors working with private AI companies and public services that could stand to benefit from the technology.
The aim is for the public and private sectors to establish mutually reinforcing roles to collectively grow the AI industry. As part of this, the plan suggested the government act as the largest customer and procurer of AI contracts that would improve public services and support private AI researchers and vendors.
The plan also called for the creation of UK Sovereign AI, a unit that would partner with the private sector to deliver Britain’s mandate of establishing and supporting AI leaders domestically.
Mark Taylor, founder and CEO of AI firm Automated Analytics, told UKTN: “At a time when the national economy is grappling with challenging economic headwinds, the AI Opportunities Action Plan demonstrates this government’s steadfast commitment to ensuring the transformative benefits of AI reach every part of the economy and people’s lives.
Delivery will take time, funding and talent. It will be interesting to learn how the government plans to resource delivery of the plan and create education opportunities to ensure people of all ages have the opportunity to upskill and take advantage of a new wave of career opportunities.”
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