- The UK government has unveiled a 50-point plan to inject artificial intelligence into the public sector
- The plan comes with a £14 billion investment in the private sector
- PM addresses security concerns but doesn’t want UK to ‘fall behind’
The UK government has laid out plans to push artificial intelligence into every corner of UK industry with a multi-billion pound investment.
The Labor government plans to ‘unleash’ AI and make the UK a ‘world leader’ by accepting £14 billion of private sector investment, and has unveiled a 50-point plan that will see AI ‘mainstream into the years’ of public services .
This includes a plan to ‘unlock’ public data by handing it over to ‘researchers and innovators’, including anonymised NHS data which will be made available to train AI models. The government says there will be “strong privacy safeguards” and the data will never be owned by private companies.
To create jobs
The plans will also seek to free up time for public sector workers by allowing AI to handle admin tasks, and will introduce ‘AI Growth Zones’ which will speed up AI infrastructure, quickly build data centers and give them better access to the energy grid – despite environmental considerations.
Private sector investment comes primarily from Vantage Data Centres, a company that plans to invest £12 billion in data center development, creating over 11,500 jobs in the process. Nscale and Kyndryl, two leading digital companies that plan to help roll out artificial intelligence in the UK economy, are also investing.
“The UK Government’s AI Capability Action Plan will play an important role in helping the UK unlock the full potential of AI,” said Alison Kay, Vice President, UK and Ireland at Amazon Web Services
“By putting close industry collaboration and public-private partnership at the heart of the Government’s agenda, all citizens, communities and businesses in every region of the UK will have the opportunity to realize the benefits of AI and thrive and grow”
A disruptive technology
The Prime Minister says AI can ‘transform working people’s lives’, speeding up planning consultations, driving down admin and feeding AI through road cameras to help spot potholes – although strangely my car can spot potholes just fine.
Minister Pat McFadden said AI is a ‘test and learn’ technology and that “mistakes will be made” with the applications, but would not confirm whether this plan would mean short-term job losses for workers. During objections to the plan, the minister warned that if Britain did not develop the technology here, the country would “lose out” to other nations in the AI race.
In the prime minister’s speech announcing the news, he acknowledged the concerns about AI but confirmed that the real danger lies in falling behind other nations, noting “the far greater risk is that we don’t go after it,” missing out ‘ massive possibilities.
AI makes services more human
The Prime Minister also outlined the ways in which AI can help make our public services ‘more human’, mainly referring to healthcare and social work, in the speech. By taking administrative and mundane tasks away from public sector staff, services will become ‘more human’ by empowering staff to reconnect with patients and those in their care.
Starmer promised to “make sure this technology is safe” by building on the previous government’s ‘world-leading’ AI safety institute and promised to maintain and develop safeguards to ensure AI is used safely.
“Change on this scale and at this speed can be worrying, especially when experts warn of security risks,” the Prime Minister said.
A boost to productivity
Productivity in Britain has been somewhat stagnant for the past 15 years, but by harnessing the full power of artificial intelligence, the Prime Minister hopes to give the UK economy the boost it so desperately needs.
That is, of course, if artificial intelligence can increase the efficiency of workers rather than result in widespread unemployment.
Recent research suggests that artificial intelligence could displace up to 275,000 jobs per year at the peak of adoption. Politicians and tech leaders alike have long insisted that AI will simply take over the mundane tasks of workers rather than replace them, but as someone who has worked in one of the many jobs that consist entirely of ‘mundane’ tasks , I have to be skeptical.
