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The tech giant called for more investment in data centres and said the UK can ‘differentiate itself from the EU’ when it comes to AI regulation.
Big Tech continues to push against AI regulation with the threat of lost innovation – this time the UK is the target.
In a new report, Google shared its views on how the UK can benefit the most from AI technology. The tech giant claims AI could help to boost the UK’s economy by hundreds of billions of pounds over the next six years.
The company also called for the UK to make a “comprehensive AI opportunity agenda” and that collective action is required from government, public sector, private companies and civil society.
“Without concerted action, the UK risks being left behind in the global race,” said Google UK and Ireland VP and MD Debbie Weinstein. “The UK needs to develop a comprehensive and thoughtful strategy that ensures it can stay ahead.”
In the report, Weinstein said safety and responsibility should “of course underpin AI innovation” but also said “we must focus our attention on what we want to achieve, not just what we want to avoid”.
A push against the EU
Google shares various recommendations to the UK in its report, such as the need to invest in more data centres to harness the power of AI. But the tech giant also used the report to criticise the EU’s regulation around AI.
“The UK has an opportunity to differentiate itself from the EU and accelerate, not hinder, innovation, growth and societal benefits,” Google said. “Any new binding rules for frontier AI labs should be considered carefully so that they don’t risk losing investment and talent.”
Google is one of various companies that is facing issues when it comes to bringing its AI models to the EU. One of the key issues is around the collection of data in the EU – data is important to train AI models but risks breaching the EU’s GDPR. Google is currently under investigation by the Irish Data Protection Commission about whether it complied with EU data laws when developing one of its AI models – PaLM 2.
Last week, various Big Tech companies signed an open letter warning the EU that its “fragmented” AI regulation could hamper innovation and progress. This letter said that if companies are going to invest heavily into AI models for European citizens, then they need “clear rules” that enable the use of European data.
In the UK report, Google recommends that the country maintains its commitment to “cross-border data flows” and maintain a “free flow of data”.
“Data flows enable partners to work together to ensure AI systems are trained on demographically and geographically diverse datasets, helping mitigate potential bias and making models and applications useful to users around the world,” Google said.
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