Categories
News

Can the UK government achieve its artificial intelligence ambitions?


The Labour government’s 50-step artificial intelligence (AI) plan units out a sequence of measures to develop the UK as a powerhouse for artificial intelligence.

A few of these steps, equivalent to constructing sovereign AI capabilities, contain huge supercomputer investments. Though this work has already begun, with new amenities equivalent to Bristol’s Isambard-AI and the Dawn supercomputer in Cambridge, the government desires to extend high-performance computing (HPC) capability 20-fold by 2030.

Procuring AI

Data from Tussell’s public sector AI procurement tracker reveals that whereas the headline figures for funding in HPC capability to help AI look promising, the complete invested is skewed by one immense contract.

Tussell calculated that £2.4bn price of AI contracts had been awarded in the UK public sector between 2018 and 2024. Nevertheless, it appears this determine is just not as large as the hype surrounding generative AI (GenAI) would counsel, with Tussell reporting that almost half of that complete stems from a single contract between the Met Workplace and Microsoft in 2021, price £1bn.

It additionally reported that £2.4bn represents roughly 2.5% of the complete worth of all IT providers and software program contracts awarded by the public sector between January 2018 and October 2024. In keeping with Tussell, this reveals that whereas there may be quite a lot of pleasure round AI, it has not filtered into public procurement in a significant method.

Knowledge silos

Past the computing capabilities required to energy machine studying and AI inference workloads, Jacob Beswick, director of AI governance at Dataiku, believes there may be some confusion over information possession and an incapability to share information in a significant method throughout the public sector.

In his expertise – having beforehand been UK government assistant director for AI adoption and regulation, and earlier than that, assistant director for industrial technique at the Division for Enterprise, Vitality and Industrial Technique – it’s virtually unimaginable to search out out who in the public sector truly makes use of AI.

There are additionally questions as to what information exists, who has possession of that information and who can entry it, in accordance with Beswick, together with “energy dynamics between central departments pushing an AI agenda and departmental autonomy”.

He stated there are information silos between departments and inside departments, equivalent to between totally different hospitals and NHS trusts, which hampers makes an attempt not simply to create efficient AI fashions, however to create a typically digital, data-driven service.

Rising abilities

the government’s five-year plan to construct out computing and AI capabilities, Amanda Brock, CEO of Open UK, stated: “Making the UK a worldwide IT superpower is greater than about AI and infrastructure. There are longstanding challenges round expertise, funding and schooling that might should be addressed to reverse that development.

“I doubt these initiatives will make the UK ‘irresistible to AI companies’. Does the government assume it has the proper stage of abilities and expertise to do that itself?”

Equally, Ivana Bartoletti, founding father of assume tank Ladies Main in AI and international chief privateness and AI governance officer at Wipro, believes there must be extra give attention to AI abilities.

“There must be an emphasis on AI abilities, extending past technical experience to wider literacy and administration abilities,” she stated. “Equipping enterprise leaders to grasp how AI can concretely resolve their issues and improve productiveness, by leveraging worker insights, will likely be important for widespread adoption.”

Bartoletti believes companies want to maneuver away from fearing AI and take extra of an AI partnership mindset.

Regional tech

One in every of the steps in the government’s AI alternatives motion plan is to determine AI progress zones, which it stated would think about regional progress alternatives. The government’s purpose is to bear in mind native progress plans and align with its industrial technique for the digital and know-how sector.

The situation of AI progress zones should even be thought of in relation to the power necessities of the computing amenities these websites would require. 

Shweta Singh, assistant professor of data techniques and administration at the College of Warwick, identified that AI seems to be closely targeted on London and the south-east, regardless of the government’s ambitions to construct out AI progress zones.

“Whereas progress zones goal to unfold advantages, traditionally, tech innovation has typically been concentrated in particular areas like London or the south-east, leaving others behind,” she stated.

Singh additionally claimed the UK’s AI strengths are weakened by its reliance on overseas AI companies, equivalent to Google-owned DeepMind, which raises issues about home innovation and mental property retention.

Whereas the common consensus from trade commentators is essentially constructive, the large problem going through the government in terms of utilising AI extra successfully in the public sector is funding.

“It’s powerful to see the place funding for brand new know-how would come from, notably as the chancellor reiterates that departmental budgets are already tight, stated Dataiku’s Beswick.

Implementing a sturdy digital and AI technique requires correct ranges of funding. As Beswick famous, if they aren’t centrally funded, funding for public sector AI initiatives should come from particular person departmental budgets.

“That’s a tricky promote for ministers already confronted with making giant quantities of financial savings,” he added.



Source link

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *