Britain must not \u201csuccumb to a narrative of decline\u201d and needs to embrace artificial intelligence after losing economic ground in the past 10 years, the former editor of the Financial Times has said.<\/p>\n
Lionel Barber, who was editor of the FT for 15 years until 2020, said Britain needs to be \u201ca lot more business-friendly\u201d after a series of blows to the corporate sector.<\/p>\n
Its aims to become a global artificial intelligence (AI) hub are crucial in helping boost the UK\u2019s standing as a global business centre, he said.<\/p>\n
Mr Barber told the Press Association: \u201cIt\u2019s very important that this country does not succumb to a narrative of decline.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt needs to be a lot more business friendly.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think there have been some bad missteps \u2013 Brexit has been a massive distraction.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd we lost ground in the last 10 years.\u201d<\/p>\n
His comments come after Mr Barber has been hired to a new specialist advisory board for US firm Capitol AI as it launches in the UK and Europe.<\/p>\n
Lord Ed Vaizey \u2013 former culture and digital minister \u2013 has also been appointed to the group\u2019s advisory board as the Washington-based firm beefs up its leadership in the UK to help ramp up expansion.<\/p>\n
Capitol AI was founded in 2021 by Shaun Modi and Tom Hallaran to offer firms a \u201cmodel-agnostic\u201d agentic AI platform to help make sense of their own data and produce documents, reports, summaries and other products.<\/p>\n
Mr Barber said he was keen to take on the role to support a tech start-up and \u201can exciting entrepreneur\u201d, while also helping Britain become a home for cutting-edge AI businesses.<\/p>\n
He told PA: \u201cThis country is trying to carve a role out for itself, so it\u2019s AI friendly.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is helping attract firms such as Capitol AI to the UK, having just opened a new office in the UK, he said.<\/p>\n
The firm has hired former Lockheed Martin and Dell executive Mike Nayler to run the UK office as it looks to build clients in the public and private sector.<\/p>\n
Mr Barber said: \u201cAI is at the heart of its business\u2026 so I\u2019m backing a high-tech entrepreneur, but also this is cutting-edge technology.<\/p>\n
\u201cAI is coming, whether you like it or not.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Britain must not \u201csuccumb to a narrative of decline\u201d and needs to embrace artificial intelligence after losing economic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4933,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[2096,13,2853,2851,2850,2852,5,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-4932","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"tag-artificial-intelligence","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-business-friendly","11":"tag-global-business-centre","12":"tag-lionel-barber","13":"tag-mr-barber","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116339351356046517","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4932\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}