UK Government Announces Ten-Year National AI Strategy

The UK Government has launched the country’s first National Artificial Intelligence (AI) Strategy, to build on the nation’s strengths in the area and maximise new opportunities for AI in the UK. The strategy is heralded as a ‘step-change’ for AI in the UK in recognition of the technology’s potential to increase resilience, productivity, growth and innovation across the private and public sectors.

The strategy’s goals are to ensure that the UK:

• Experiences a significant growth in both the number and type of discoveries that occur in the UK, and are subsequently commercialised and exploited in the nation.
• Benefits from the highest amount of economic and productivity growth due to AI.
• Establishes the most trusted and pro-innovation system for AI governance in the world.

These goals will be achieved by working towards the following three pillars:

• Invest and plan for the long-term needs of the AI ecosystem to cement the UK’s leadership as a science and AI superpower.
• Support the transition to an AI-enabled economy, capturing the benefits of innovation in the UK, and ensuring AI benefits all sectors and regions.
• Ensure the UK gets the national and international governance of AI technologies right to encourage innovation, investment, and protect the public and the nation’s fundamental values.

The strategy sets out a series of short-term (next three months), medium-term (6-12 months) and longer-term (12-months and beyond) actions under these three pillars. These include plans to develop the next generation of AI talent through continued support for postgraduate learning; ensuring children from a wide variety of backgrounds can access specialist courses; and raising the standards around the use AI while building the case for deeper investor confidence.

Additional plans contained within the strategy are as follows:

• Launch a National AI Research and Innovation Programme to improve coordination and collaboration between the country’s researchers and to help transform the UK’s AI capabilities, while boosting business and public sector adoption of AI technologies and their ability to take them to market.
• Launching a joint Office for AI (OAI) and UK Research & Innovation (UKRI) programme aimed at continuing to develop AI in sectors based outside of London and the South East. This would focus on the commercialisation of ideas and potentially the targeting of funding and resources at areas, such as energy and farming, that do not currently use AI to its potential.
• Publish a joint review with UKRI into the availability and capacity of computing power for UK researchers and organisations, including the physical hardware needed to drive a major roll out in AI technologies. The review will also consider wider needs for the commercialisation and deployment of AI, including its environmental impacts.
• Launch a consultation on copyright and patents for AI through the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) to make sure the UK is capitalising on the ideas it generates and by best supporting AI development and use through the copyright and patent system. This consultation will also include a focus on how to protect AI generated inventions which would otherwise not meet inventorship criteria as well as measures to make it easier to use copyright protected material in AI development.
• Trialing an AI Standards Hub to coordinate UK engagement in setting the rules globally, and working with The Alan Turing Institute to update guidance on AI ethics and safety in the public sector and create practical tools to make sure the technology is used ethically.

The government will also launch a Defence AI Strategy later this year, the new Defence AI Centre through the Ministry of Defence, and begin engagement on the draft National Strategy for AI-driven technologies in Health and Social Care through the NHS AI Lab.

Welcoming the strategy’s publication, EPSRC Executive Chair Professor Dame Lynn Gladden said:

‘UKRI fully embraces the opportunity of AI, as recognised in the Government’s AI strategy.

‘Research and innovation are key to ensuring that the potential of AI is realised across society and the economy. It is UKRI’s ambition to build upon the UK’s strengths in AI research and innovation to unlock the potential benefits of these technologies.

‘We are working with our partners in academia, business and government to establish a national AI research and innovation programme that creates an environment in which world-leading researchers and innovators will thrive.’

The strategy can be accessed in full at the GOV.UK website.