In the global AI investment, innovation and implementation stakes, the UK lies in a creditable third place. Trailing the US and second-placed China, it holds a slight lead over Canada and South Korea, according to the Global AI Index published in December 2020 by Tortoise Media. The moral of Aesop’s most famous fable involving a tortoise may be ‘more haste, less speed’, but Westminster is seeking to hare ahead in this race over the coming decade. Its national AI strategy, published in September 2021, is a 10-year plan to make the country an “AI superpower”. But what does that mean exactly?
Although Westminster has already poured more than £2.3bn into AI initiatives since 2014, this strategy will accelerate progress, promises Chris Philp, minister for technology and the digital economy at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.
“It’s a hugely significant vision to help the UK strengthen its position as a global science superpower and seize the potential of modern technology to improve people’s lives and solve global challenges such as climate change,” he declares.