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Michal Szymczak of Zartis said that the latest budget announced today only pays ‘lip service’ to artificial intelligence and does not provide enough specifics.
The UK government has announced an additional £100m in funding for the Alan Turing Institute, its national institute for AI and data science, over the next five years as part of its Spring Budget 2024.
Shared by chancellor of the exchequer Jeremy Hunt earlier today (6 March), the provision of the UK budget document doubles the commitment to the country’s AI sector as it hopes to become a pioneering ecosystem for the technology.
“As the UK’s national institute for AI and data science, the Alan Turing Institute drives economic and scientific advancements, impacting millions through its cutting-edge research,” the budget document reads.
The government also announced a new £7.4m upskilling fund pilot that aims to help SMEs develop AI skills of the future and unlock new opportunities in the space. It comes ahead of a SME Digital Adoption Taskforce which the government will shortly be launching.
“The taskforce will investigate how best to support the adoption of digital technology by SMEs to boost their productivity,” the budget document reads.
“The work of the taskforce will support that of the AI Opportunity Forum, which brings pioneering companies together to encourage AI adoption across the private sector to boost productivity, fuel innovation and deliver growth in all areas of the economy.”
In late November, Microsoft committed to investing £2.5bn in the UK over the next three years to expand its AI data centre footprint in the country and foster research in the area.
The investment will see Microsoft bring more than 20,000 of its most advanced graphics processing units (GPUs) to the UK by 2026, which will fuel the country’s progress in the development of machine learning and AI models.
Earlier that month, prime minister Rishi Sunak hosted the world’s first major AI Safety Summit in the UK to promote greater international collaboration on the emerging technology. This led to the Bletchley Declaration, an agreement between the world’s major powers to work together in regulating AI.
Response
But not everyone is happy with the latest budget and its implications for the AI sector.
Michal Szymczak, head of AI strategy at technology consultancy firm Zartis, said that the UK Spring Budget only pays “lip service” to AI playing a part of investments across healthcare and public sector and that it didn’t have enough specifics.
“Considering we’re dealing with a technology here that is poised to change the world, it feels like an oversight for the UK government not to address it more thoroughly. It would have been good to see more transparency over how exactly the UK plans on staying on top of the AI power struggle against major players like the US and China,” Szymczak said.
“There’s just a huge gap between what our industry needs and what education systems teach. We need both investment in technologies as well as schemes to upskill people, to make sure they are equipped to work with and make the most of AI.
“Bluntly put, these AI-related skills won’t be optional in the future, so we need to see continued pressure on the government to fund the development of those skills. Today’s announcement, however, raises concern over how concrete and mature the UK’s plans really are to incorporate AI.”
For Allan Kaye, co-founder and managing director at Vesper Technologies, the latest funding set aside for the Allan Turing Institute is not enough.
“If we want the UK to become the next AI superpower, or as Hunt put it ‘the world’s next Silicon Valley’, we need to see investment in the infrastructure required to support AI growth. This includes servers and the latest GPU architectures, as well as a network of data centres suitably equipped to handle the huge power budgets and heat dissipation associated with AI,” Kaye said.
“It’s no longer enough to use AI models and demonstrate the public sector is thinking innovatively – we need to see steps taken to make this a long-term strategy aimed at putting the UK ahead and incubating start-ups.”
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