UK GOVERNMENT’S NATIONAL AI STRATEGY HAS BEEN PUBLISHED!

UK Government has published its National AI Strategy Guide (“Guide”) on 22nd September 2021. With the aforementioned Guide, UK Government has set forth its ten-year plan to make Britain a global AI superpower.

According to the Guide, Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) is the fastest-growing deep technology in the world, with huge potential to rewrite the rules of entire industries, drive substantial economic growth and transform all areas of life.

The UK’s National AI Strategy, therefore, aims to:

  • Invest and plan for the long-term needs of the AI ecosystem to continue our leadership as a science and AI superpower;
  • Support the transition to an AI-enabled economy, capturing the benefits of innovation in the UK, and ensuring AI benefits all sectors and regions;
  • Ensure the UK gets the national and international governance of AI technologies right to encourage innovation, investment, and protect the public and our fundamental values.

UK’s short-term aims include;

  • Publish a framework for Government's role in enabling better data availability in the wider economy,
  • Consult on the role and options for a National Cyber-Physical Infrastructure Framework,
  • Support the development of AI, data science and digital skills through the Department for Education’s Skills Bootcamps,
  • Begin engagement on the Draft National Strategy for AI-driven technologies in Health and Social Care, through the NHS AI Lab,
  • Publish the Defence AI Strategy, through the Ministry of Defence,
  • Launch a consultation on copyright and patents for AI through the IPO,
  • Publish the CDEI AI assurance roadmap,
  • Determine the role of data protection in wider AI governance following the Data: A new direction consultation,
  • Publish details of the approaches the Ministry of Defence will use when adopting and using AI,
  • Develop an all-of-government approach to international AI activity.

UK’s medium-term aims include;

  • Publish research into what skills are needed to enable employees to use AI in a business setting and identify how national skills provision can meet those needs,
  • Evaluate the private funding needs and challenges of AI scaleups,
  • Support the National Centre for Computing Education to ensure AI programmes for schools are accessible,
  • Support a broader range of people to enter AI-related jobs by ensuring career pathways highlight opportunities to work with or develop AI,
  • Implement the US UK Declaration on Cooperation in AI R&D,
  • Publish a review into the UK’s computing capacity needs to support AI innovation, commercialisation and deployment,
  • Roll out new visa regimes to attract the world's best AI talent to the UK,
  • Publish research into opportunities to encourage diffusion of AI across the economy,
  • Consider how Innovation Missions include AI capabilities and promote ambitious mission-based cooperation through bilateral and multilateral efforts, 
  • Extend UK aid to support local innovation in developing countries,
  • Build an open repository of AI challenges with real-world applications,
  • Publish White Paper on a pro-innovation national position on governing and regulating AI,
  • Complete an in-depth analysis on algorithmic transparency, with a view to develop a cross-government standard,
  • Pilot an AI Standards Hub to coordinate UK engagement in AI standardisation globally,
  • Establish medium and long term horizon scanning functions to increase government’s awareness of AI safety.

UK’s long-term aims include;

  • Undertake a review of our international and domestic approach to semiconductor supply chains,
  • Consider what open and machine-readable government datasets can be published for AI models,
  • Launch a new National AI Research and Innovation Programme, that will align funding programmes across UKRI and support the wider ecosystem,
  • Work with global partners on shared R&D challenges, leveraging Overseas Development Assistance to put AI at the heart of partnerships worldwide,
  • Back diversity in AI by continuing existing interventions across top talent, PhDs, AI and Data Science Conversion Courses and Industrial Funded Masters,
  • Monitor and use National Security and Investment Act to protect national security while keeping the UK open for business,
  • Include trade deal provisions in emerging technologies, including AI,
  • Launch joint Office for AI / UKRI programme to stimulate the development and adoption of AI technologies in high potential, lower-AI-maturity sectors,
  • Continue supporting the development of capabilities around trustworthiness, adoptability, and transparency of AI technologies through the National AI Research and Innovation Programme,
  • Join up across government to identify where using AI can provide a catalytic contribution to strategic challenges,
  • Explore with stakeholders the development of an AI technical standards engagement toolkit to support the AI ecosystem to engage in the global AI standardisation landscape,
  • Work with partners in multilateral and multi-stakeholder fora, and invest in GPAI to shape and support AI governance in line with UK values and priorities,
  • Work with The Alan Turing Institute to update guidance on AI ethics and safety in the public sector,
  • Work with national security, defence, and leading researchers to understand what public sector actions can safely advance AI and mitigate catastrophic risks.

The National AI Strategy proposes three core pillars which, taken together, are areas the UK can make the biggest impact to set the country on its way to being an AI and science superpower fit for the coming decade.

They will publish a set of quantitative indicators, given the far-ranging and hard-to-define impacts AI will have on the economy and society. They will also continue talking with the wider community to get their feedback on AI in the UK.

The government’s AI Council, an independent expert group formed to represent high-level leadership of the UK’s AI ecosystem, has played a key role in reaching a National AI Strategy and informing its direction.

 

You can find the full text of the Guide here.

 

Kind regards,

Zumbul Attorneys-at-Law

info@zumbul.av.tr