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Roula Khalaf, editor of the FT, picks her favorite stories on this weekly newsletter.
Artificial intelligence is the decisive opportunity of our generation. It's not a technology that's coming. It is already here, changing lives materially. Our NHS is about stopping disease. Exciting recent firms are emerging in our economy. It is pushing the boundaries of scientific discovery in our universities. And it accelerates this government's plan to remodel the country.
Take on waiting times within the NHS. We will use AI to scale back them by taking appointments that patients can now not keep and rebooking them quickly. Or take your kids's education with you. We will expand the opportunities for teachers to make use of AI to tailor lessons specifically to your child's needs. The possibilities are limitless. AI may also help small businesses maintain records. It can detect potholes faster. It may also help speed up planning applications so Britain can construct again. It goes on and on. In the approaching years, hardly any aspect of our society will remain untouched.
Britain needs to be thrilled by this. On the one hand, it offers credible hope for a long-awaited boost to productivity in the general public sector. Nurses, social employees, teachers, cops – for hundreds of thousands of frontline employees, AI might be the valuable gift of time. This means they’ll refocus on the nurturing and outreach points of their work that so often remain hidden beneath bureaucracy. This is the wonderful irony of AI in the general public sector. It offers the chance to make services more humane.
As the third largest AI market on the planet, the UK can also be well positioned to make the most of the expansion opportunities. Numerous world-class AI firms are already based within the UK. Our universities are teeming with scientific talent. We have a thriving technology ecosystem with a few of the very best entrepreneurs on the planet. Our AI security infrastructure is actually world-leading. And our values of democracy, open trade and the rule of law are ideally suited to this test. Our values are critical to the free exchange of ideas needed to really maximize the potential of AI.
However, we cannot sit back and wait for the competition to catch up. The global race for AI leadership is fast and getting faster. Some countries will make AI breakthroughs and export them to the world. Others must buy and import these breakthroughs. I don't think the federal government needs to be passive or neutral on this – that is the be-all and end-all of business policy. AI is the largest force for change on the planet at once. I’m determined to make use of it to usher in a golden age of public service reform. And I strongly consider that the UK shall be the very best place to start out and scale an AI company. I do know that growth on this area can’t be controlled by the state. But it is completely the federal government's job to make sure that the best conditions are in place.
That's why, just days after our election, I hired enterprise capitalist Matt Clifford to develop a plan to harness the limitless potential of AI. Today we’re unveiling that plan and moving forward with results.
We will create recent AI growth zones and breathe recent life into former industrial sites across the country. We will increase public sector computing power – the engine of AI performance – by a minimum of an element of 20. We will establish a gold standard data access system with a national data library, a transparent and trustworthy copyright regime and a brand new determination to unlock the innovation potential of NHS data. And we are going to overcome the ridiculous blockages in our planning system that prevent billions from being invested in the information centers and network connections that AI relies on.
Make no mistake – these reforms are already beginning to bear fruit. On Monday alone, Vantage Data Centers confirmed it will invest greater than £12 billion in recent data centers across the country, including constructing one in every of Europe's largest data centers in Wales. This is anticipated to create 11,500 jobs within the areas of AI and construction. And it is an indication of the long run.
Because Britain mustn’t only be enthusiastic about AI, but additionally confident about it. We don’t must go the US or EU path to AI regulation – we are able to go our own way and take a quintessentially British approach that tests AI long before regulating it, so all the things we do is proportionate and informed the science. And alongside that, a proposal to investors of stability, pragmatism and the common sense they might expect from democratic British values.
In short, that is our message to everyone working on the AI frontier: take a have a look at the UK. Our aim is to be the very best government partner for you worldwide. We can see the long run, we’re running towards it and supporting our builders. Because we all know that AI has arrived as the last word force for change and national renewal.
