The future is now. Artificial intelligence is no longer just about beating humans at chess and Go, it’s revolutionising whole industries and will ultimately revolutionise them all. If anything, the transformative power of this already lauded technology is still being underhyped.
That’s why we launched a report yesterday on how to make the UK the best place in the world for AI innovation. In his pithy briefing paper, former Head of Regulation at the Office for AI Séb Krier sets out eight recommendations for achieving this goal:
– Create a pool of cloud compute credits for the UK R&D ecosystem.
– Upgrade public data infrastructure and open up datasets.
– Explore innovation-friendly regulatory markets.
– Work closely with the EU to review and improve GDPR.
– Lower barriers to immigration and actively attract foreign talent through targeted scholarships.
– Shun protectionism and proactively lead global AI governance efforts.
– Foster public trust in the public sector’s use of AI by giving the CDEI greater independence and allowing it to audit public sector algorithms.
– Ensure the UK’s intellectual property regime is fit for AI by creating an exemption for for-profit data and text mining.
We are well poised to build on our strong foundations. As our Research Director Sam Dumitriu discusses in an article for politics.co.uk, in a year when scientists produced the first mRNA vaccines to help defeat a pandemic, it may be that DeepMind’s use of AI to solve the protein folding problem is 2020’s greatest discovery. And while DeepMind was sold to Google, as I argue for Forbes we will necessarily need to ally with the US on a technology that comes with such profound geopolitical and perhaps even existential threats.
The UK has been a driving force in the development of AI as Séb explains in this article for CapX, and back in 2018 we were one of the world’s first countries to announce policies to strengthen the sector through our AI Sector Deal. However, on the policy front things have stalled since then. Until last week, that is, when, partly in response to the AI Council’s AI Roadmap, the Government announced its intention to publish a National AI Strategy later this year.
Our paper aims to feed into that strategy, but prior to that we want it to start a discussion around our recommendations and whether we need anything else. Watch this space for a virtual roundtable – or register your early interest.
And this is just the first technology/sector/industry specific briefing paper. Our next will be on drones. If there is another technology/sector/industry that you think is ripe for policy recommendations just let me know which and why (it doesn’t need to be tech focused).
Nation building
According to the annual Tech Nation report, tech investment in the UK reached $15bn in 2020. Only the US and China get more and last year we pulled further away from Germany and France. The UK tech startup and scaleup ecosystem is valued at $585bn, which is 120% more than in 2017, and more than double the next most valuable ecosystem, Germany, at $291bn. The UK is also more attractive to international investors than ever, with 63% of investment into UK tech coming from overseas last year – up from 50% in 2016.
London is fourth for tech VC investment globally behind San Francisco, Beijing and New York at $10.6bn, with the percentage of total UK VC investment made in London increasing from 73% to 88% between 2018 and 2021.
Despite this very good news, some will be concerned about the regional breakdown and others may be worried that more cash is coming from abroad for national security reasons. However, I think if there is a concern, it is around the drop off in funding going to tech startups.
The report draws attention to the fact that investment in seed stage companies is decreasing as a proportion of overall tech VC investment (14% to 6% over 5 years) – and along these lines, John Spindler of Capital Enterprise draws attention to Beauhurst research in a LinkedIn post which shows that the number of successful first-time deals is now below 2012 levels.
As John suggests: “It might be cyclical, it might mean the incentives to invest in first round raises (the most risky) needs refreshing or it might be that the amount of investment going into scale ups and their ability to suck up talent and attention is having an impact.” This is something we will be keeping an eye on.
Gig a lot
Internet speed used to be a significant concern for business owners, but over the years it went down their list of gripes. The pandemic has changed that, as many employees are expected to continue to work from home even after the pandemic. Faster broadband has once again risen up the agenda.
Today the Government has launched a £5bn ‘Project Gigabit’, with an extra £210m worth of vouchers to help those with slow speeds and £110m to connect up to 7,000 rural GP surgeries, libraries and schools. There is also a call for evidence on using satellite and 5G technology to connect very hard to reach areas, which reportedly could involve Starlink, Elon Musk’s network of satellites.
Vouchers will be worth up to £1,500 for homes and £3,500 for businesses to help to cover the costs of installing gigabit broadband. The voucher will launch on Thursday 8th April 2021 and you’ll be able to check your eligibility here.
This is an extract from our Friday Newsletter. Sign up to future newsletters here.