Artificial intelligence is driving the fastest technological and scientific revolution in human history. Whether it’s the productivity tools businesses use to speed up routine tasks, the programmes that spot cancer in hospital scans twice as fast, or the facial recognition software that helps the police catch violent criminals, AI has become critical to the future of our country.
That is why since 2023 we have looked past our political differences and authored a series of joint reports, urging all political parties to make securing Britain’s leadership in science and technology our “New National Purpose”. We have called for a significant increase in compute capacity, involving a major investment in sovereign AI capabilities, greater access to data, innovation-friendly regulation, and reforms to train and attract to Britain the world’s leading technology experts.
Although progress has been made, including the AI Safety Institute established by Rishi Sunak and the Regulatory Innovation Office created by Sir Keir Starmer, the prime minister, the general election and the tight budgetary situation have slowed down action over the last year.
While the UK is considering what to do next, AI advances are speeding up. In the past year we have seen the release of the first AI models capable of planning and reasoning from OpenAI. Meanwhile, DeepMind’s new AlphaGeometry and AlphaFold 3 systems show significant advances in using AI to solve complex mathematical problems and predict how small-molecule drugs and antibodies interact with proteins.
This year could lead to even faster advances. Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, has argued that by the end of 2025 “we may see the first AI agents ‘join the workforce’ and materially change the output of companies”. Meanwhile, Elon Musk has announced Tesla will start selling AI-powered humanoid robots from 2026, and Jensen Huang, the chief executive of Nvidia, has said advances in AI put the world on the cusp of a “multitrillion-dollar opportunity” in autonomous vehicles.
This next wave of AI and its potential to transform businesses and public services mean that it will be impossible for a country to have a strategy for growth, public service reform, or defence without strong and sustained action to seize the opportunities of AI.
Other countries around the world have been fast to recognise this. China is investing tens of billions of dollars in developing new chips to deliver on their AI ambitions, while South Korea is establishing a National AI Computing Centre. The Emirati firm G42 is building data centres and cloud facilities powered by sophisticated US chips. Unless urgent action is taken now, the UK will fall far behind.
Matt Clifford’s new AI Action Plan, published today, offers a way forward. The strategy calls for a 20-fold increase in the capacity of the AI Research Resource; new high-value public sector datasets; new regulatory sandboxes for AI-enabled robotics; and a flagship university scholarship programme for AI. These ambitious policies afford our country the opportunity to get back on track, and include many of the kinds of measures that we have been advocating.
The Prime Minister deserves credit for commissioning this strategy and for fully endorsing it. Now we need to see a relentless focus in government on delivering on these commitments as a matter of urgency.
Both of us know all too well from our time in government how easy it is for well-designed strategies to get mangled in the machinery of Whitehall, for departmental decisions to be deferred and delayed, for levers in Downing Street to be pulled but nothing to happen. Delivery on the AI Action Plan with the necessary urgency will require significant additional investment. It will require projects to be funded rapidly without the usual obstacles of Treasury business cases, poorly suited to assess investments in technology. Above all, it will require sustained interest and political capital from the very top of government; if other departmental priorities cut across aspects of the strategy, the Prime Minister must steadfastly back the delivery of the AI Action Plan.
The challenge of responding to the AI revolution is so urgent, the risk of falling behind other countries so great, and the opportunities so exciting, that nothing less than a relentless focus on delivering Matt Clifford’s plan will do.
This article was originally published in The Times on 12 January 2025.