The UK has invested £100 million to set up a government-industry AI taskforce which is dedicated in boosting the country’s sovereignty and competitiveness in the field. The taskforce will develop foundational models – systems that train on enormous amounts of data such as ChatGPT and Google Bard – to benefit public services and encourage growth of the UK economy. AI technology is estimated to raise the country’s Gross Domestic Product as predicted by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which is set to decrease by 0.3 percent this year.
Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister of the UK said, “Harnessing the potential of AI provides enormous opportunities to grow our economy, create better-paid jobs, and build a better future through advances in healthcare and security”. With a wide application, AI can accelerate the diagnosis and drug discovery and development process. It will be essential to increase public and commercial trust of artificial intelligence. To ensure safe and reliable use of its foundation models, the taskforce will follow the guidelines set in March in the AI Regulation Paper.
This taskforce is to be monitored directly by the Prime Minister and Science, Innovation, and Technology Secretary of the UK. A Chair will be appointed to this position during the summer and the first pilot projects of public services are supposed to take place within the following six months. After raising up an investment of 900 million to an exascale AI computing, the country commits more and more to advance Artificial Intelligence in order to preserve its role of a major global hub.
Technology Secretary Michelle Donelan further stressed the importance of taking action and not lagging behind, saying: “We need to act now to seize the opportunities AI can offer us in the future. We’re backing our expert taskforce with the funding to make our ambitions for an AI-enabled country a reality and keep the UK at the front of the pack in this emerging technology”.
The government-industry AI taskforce is facilitated by a team of experienced specialists who have expertise and background in various aspects of the field, particularly those related to artificial intelligence and machine learning. The team is led by Ioanna Dimitropoulou, a writer at the publication TNW and a specialist in green tech, EU policy, AI, startups, and sustainability. Dimitropoulou is known for her unique background coming from the humanities and for her great empathy and interest in technologies meant to enable change for a better future.
With the UK’s effort to stay ahead of the game, the country can potentially leverage the new wave of AI-based technologies that could significantly accelerate economic growth, support innovation, and provide added value to businesses and citizens.
