UK’s New AI Action Plan Aims to Position Country as a Global Powerhouse

The U.K. government has released its “AI Opportunities Action Plan,” outlining the 50 ways it will build out the AI sector and turn the country into a “world leader.” The strategy involves boosting public computing capacity twentyfold, creating a training data library, and building AI hubs in deindustrialised areas.

Innovation is front and centre in this new plan, marking a clear turn from the risk-averse approach of the previous Conservative government, exemplified by its AI Safety Summit and safety pledges. Most recommendations focus on developing AI infrastructure, boosting adoption, growing talent, and attracting investment.

“Our plan will make Britain the world leader,” Prime Minister Keir Starmer said in a press release, emphasising the creation of “more jobs and investment in the UK, more money in people’s pockets, and transformed public services.”

Plan designed to boost AI use countrywide to ‘win the global race’

There are strong arguments for this shot in the arm for the tech sector. In August 2024, the number of tech startups founded in the U.K. suffered its first “marked decline” since 2022. This metric is seen as an indicator of industry growth — or lack thereof.

The U.K. ranks third in the world for AI readiness according to Stanford University research, falling well behind the U.S. and China. Tech giants like Google have also spoken out about the laws in the U.K. that prevent AI models from being trained on copyrighted materials and called for a “pro-innovation regulatory framework” to prevent the country from being left behind.

SEE: UK Government Announces £32m of AI Projects

On the other hand, evidence suggests that AI safety and regulation still have significant room for improvement. A report from Microsoft found that almost half of U.K. SMEs do not use AI technologies in any capacity, and 72% cited concerns about their potential unreliability as a barrier to its adoption. In October 2023, research from the University of Cambridge ruled that the U.K. needs AI legislation in safety and transparency so companies can confidently put resources into AI development.

The government tasked tech entrepreneur and newly-appointed AI Opportunities Adviser Matt Clifford to develop the Action Plan in July, which he discussed with venture capital firms. His 50 recommendations on how to grow AI and boost its adoption will be implemented in the U.K.’s plan.

According to the International Monetary Fund, the AI Action Plan could see annual productivity gains of 1.5% and boost the economy by an average of £47 billion annually over a decade. Furthermore, Microsoft research found that adding just five years onto the time it takes to roll out AI in the U.K. could reduce its economic impact in 2035 by more than £150 billion.

The Prime Minister said: “The AI industry needs a government that is on their side, one that won’t sit back and let opportunities slip through its fingers. And in a world of fierce competition, we cannot stand by. We must move fast and take action to win the global race.”

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Clifford’s key recommendations

Clifford’s proposals fall under three broad categories: laying the foundations for AI to flourish, boosting AI adoption in public and private sectors, and keeping the U.K. ahead. Thirty of the recommendations relate to the first category, which includes:

• Establish “AI Growth Zones” in deindustrialized areas: Within these zones, planning requests for data centres will be expedited, and AI infrastructure will have better access to the energy grid, ideally from clean sources like nuclear fusion. This is needed as the construction of new data centres in the U.K. is being held up due to insufficient electricity supply. Three private tech companies have already pledged £14 billion to this end.
• Increase public compute capacity twentyfold by 2030: Clifford found that this would give the U.K. the processing power it needs to fully embrace AI. As of November 2022, the U.K. had only 1.3% of global computing capacity, while Microsoft ranked the country 11th in the world for cloud infrastructure in May. This initiative will be started by building a new supercomputer, a change of tune since the government scrapped £1.3 billion for building these resources in August.
• Create a National Data Library: This will involve gathering “five high-impact public datasets” to be made available to private AI researchers, but there is little clarity on how this will be achieved “responsibly, securely, and ethically,” as claimed. Clifford also recommends creating a “copyright-cleared British media asset training data set,” which can be licensed internationally. This is unlikely to be accepted by creative industries, which, just last month, called for greater protection of copyright laws so artists retain control when licensing to AI firms.
• Be more aggressive with text and data mining: Similarly, Clifford states that “current uncertainty around intellectual property is hindering innovation and undermining our broader ambitions for AI.” He recommends reforming text and data mining practices. While he mentions leaving rights holders with control over the use of their content, the mandate suggests that this is not a priority. The government has launched a consultation on this recommendation.
• Require regulators to declare how they support AI innovation: Data regulators are far too risk-averse from Clifford’s perspective. He believes they should be making active steps to support the growth of AI, such as granting more licenses and AI resources and reporting them annually. If reporting mandates and deadlines do not provide enough pressure, he suggests employing a new central body with a “higher risk tolerance” to make such decisions.
• Nurture AI talent: The AI Action Plan contains several recommendations to support AI talent in the U.K., including assessing the skills gap, supporting higher education institutions to teach relevant skills and boost AI graduates, expanding the number of AI education pathways, using the immigration system to attract graduates from international universities, and actively promoting diversity. Indeed, only 28% of Coursera’s Generative AI course enrollments are from women.

SEE: Red Hat: AI Is the Most In-Demand Skill in the UK for 2024.

Details about the three categories of recommendations

Compared to innovation-boosting strategies, there are relatively few nods to AI safety within this first category of recommendations. These include continuing to support the AI Safety Institute and its research and building assurance tools.

The second category of the AI Opportunities Action Plan suggests how, after the foundations have been laid, the government can boost the adoption of AI across the public and private sectors. Clifford recommends taking a “Scan → Pilot → Scale” approach whereby the government identifies high-impact opportunities for AI in the public sector, prototypes a solution, and then scales them across industries and regions. It also suggests that digital government infrastructure is made available to private tech companies, an AI Knowledge Hub is created with guidance for both the private and public sector, and addressing private sector user adoption barriers.

The third category looks at how the government can keep the U.K. “ahead of the pack internationally” when it comes to growing the AI industry. The category contains just one recommendation: creating the Sovereign AI Unit to support private-sector AI research. This will offer companies financial investment, compute, data sets, overseas talent, and access to the national security community “to maximise the U.K.’s chance of growing globally competitive national champions.”

Tech giants applaud U.K.’s AI vision, but fears of cyber attacks and copyright exploitation remain

Tech companies have generally responded positively to the AI Opportunities Action Plan. They hark back to British innovations of the past such as the locomotive and Colossus computer to exemplify the cutting-edge technology it may enable. They also cite the U.K.’s attitude towards AI as the reason they’ve set up shop here.

Alison Kay, VP overseeing U.K. and Ireland at Amazon Web Services, said that the benefits AI can bring and enhance are why it pledged to invest £8 billion in data centres in the country.

Zahra Bahrololoumi, CEO of Salesforce UK and Ireland, told TechRepublic in an email that the U.K.’s “prime position to fully unlock the opportunities of AI” is why it chose it as the site of its first-ever AI Centre.

Naturally, not all are in agreement. Michael Adjei, systems engineering director at  data center security company Illumio, said that researchers with access to the proposed National Data Library will “become prime targets for cyberattacks.”

SEE: 87% of UK Businesses Are Unprepared for Cyberattacks

“Cybercriminals will look to exploit the hidden layers of AI, which are often proprietary and insufficiently scrutinised,” he told TechRepublic in an email. “Vulnerabilities and coding flaws in these layers may remain undiscovered longer than in other AI layers, leaving third parties open to exploitation.”

Creative industries are also not sold on the new plan. Dawn Alford, Executive Director of the Society of Editors, said in a statement: “While we support efforts to drive growth, the government must also look to support the creative industries which continue to be exploited by the unauthorised scraping of their content by generative AI tools.”

“The U.K. can achieve public service reform and seize all the growth opportunities associated with AI without facilitating a U.S. tech-led heist of U.K. copyrighted works,” Dan Conway, CEO of the Publishers Association, added in a statement.