Alex Hern, our writer on AI, explains where Britain might derive an advantage in the AI race<\/b><\/p>\n
America has the money. China has the people. Europe would say it has the enlightened regulatory state. So what would make Britain a natural home for AI?<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the question at the heart of the British government\u2019s multi-billion-pound pitch to the tech sector. And it\u2019s a crucial one to get right: the only way to make the sums add up on Sir Keir Starmer\u2019s plans for Britain is to burst out of the economic stagnation of the past decade into solid GDP growth. An\u00a0AI boom\u00a0could do that.<\/p>\n
Almost as soon as he was in Number 10, the prime minister commissioned Matt Clifford, a venture capitalist, to produce a plan for enticing the industry\u2014and its billions of pounds of investment\u2014to Britain. Mr Clifford offered up the AI Opportunities Action Plan, a 50-point programme of \u201cdata libraries\u201d, \u201cgrowth zones\u201d and \u201cresearch resources\u201d. The government announced on Monday that it would adopt the plan in full, save for some hesitancy on recommendations for wider visa access for graduates of top universities.<\/p>\n
But if the intended impression is a government charging headfirst to an AI future, the reality has been more cautious. I understand that the plan was originally intended to arrive in November. Donald Trump\u2019s victory, however, along with his\u00a0subsequent threats of trade wars\u00a0against anyone who over-regulates American companies, prompted a rethink.<\/p>\n
Certainly, Mr Clifford\u2019s plan as it has arrived is enthusiastic about the potential of AI, and the government somehow more so. On Monday Sir Keir told reporters that he expected productivity would double within five to ten years because of AI. Given the last doubling took 30 years, either it is an incredibly bullish prediction, or the prime minister was actually speaking about rates of growth rather than levels.<\/p>\n
The plan\u2019s key points include liberalising planning laws around data centres, creating a \u201cnational data library\u201d to aggregate potentially valuable datasets the state holds and reworking public-sector procurement to focus on areas where AI can produce major gains. But one thing it leaves unsaid is the killer question: why Britain? What can the country offer to secure its place at the AI frontier? Can companies based here hold their own against San Francisco\u2019s OpenAI?<\/p>\n
Britain is the third-largest market for AI, Peter Kyle, Britain\u2019s science secretary, notes. But\u00a0the country\u2019s welfare state\u00a0is what makes it stand out, he says. The fuel for AI is data, and Britain\u2019s datasets are \u201cgenuinely unavailable to pretty much any other country in the world\u201d. Freed from the need to follow the EU\u2019s regulations, Sir Keir added, Britain can offer a meaningful alternative for companies who might want to set up shop.<\/p>\n
Tapping into that opportunity will provoke a backlash. As AI enthusiasm grows, so too does scepticism\u2014particularly among Labour\u2019s own supporters. Will the party have the stomach to see such a divisive plan through to completion? \u201cWe want to engage with everyone,\u201d Mr Kyle says, but he is firm: under Labour, AI\u2019s impact will be \u201cuniversal\u201d. With Britain\u2019s monolithic health service, centralised bureaucracy and the remnants of a cradle-to-grave welfare state, Sir Keir has more chance than most leaders to make that happen. Whether he can make it popular is a tougher proposition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alex Hern, our writer on AI, explains where Britain might derive an advantage in the AI race America…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":286276,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5018,3,4],"tags":[1942,748,393,4884,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-286275","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-britain","8":"category-uk","9":"category-united-kingdom","10":"tag-artificial-intelligence","11":"tag-britain","12":"tag-england","13":"tag-great-britain","14":"tag-northern-ireland","15":"tag-scotland","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom","18":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114904817078612188","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286275\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/286276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}