AI Opportunities Action Plan

Question

11:07:00

Asked by

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they have taken to implement the recommendations of the independent report AI Opportunities Action Plan, published on 13 January.

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper and declare my technology interests as set out in the register.

The Government are taking action to capitalise on AI’s potential and welcomed the publication of the AI Opportunities Action Plan, accepting all 50 recommendations. Implementation is well under way. We have launched the AI growth zone application process, held the first meeting of the AI Energy Council and signed an MoU with Anthropic. We are delivering the AI research resource, including the Isambard-AI and Dawn supercomputers, which will boost the UK’s AI compute capacity thirtyfold.

My Lords, Matt Clifford delivered an excellent report, with 50 wide-ranging recommendations across our economy and society. Does the Minister agree that the fact that they rightly range widely makes clear the need for the Government to bring forward cross-sector AI regulation to ensure that, wherever we come across AI in our lives, there will be clarity, certainty and consistency on how we have that AI experience, which would surely be good for innovators, investors, creatives, citizens and our country?

There are three approaches to making sure that we get consistency and appropriate regulation and support, as the noble Lord suggested. The first is that the regulators look after AI in the domains which they already look after. We are making sure that they are properly supported to do that and can join up—for example, in the Digital Regulation Cooperation Forum—to learn lessons across different areas as they apply AI in their domains. The second is the approach of assurance: to develop an assurance industry in the UK which can assure people that, when they use AI, it performs what they expect it to and in the way they expect. That is true both for the Government—the Artificial Intelligence Playbook for the UK Government addresses some of the wider issues—and in developing the assurance industry overall and looking at areas such as bias in systems. The third, as he alluded to, is the question of what happens as artificial general intelligence, artificial superintelligence and the latest models come along. We remain committed to bringing forward AI legislation so that we can realise the enormous benefits and opportunities of this technology in a safe and secure way. We continue to refine our proposals and hope to launch a public consultation before the end of the year.

My Lords, will the Minister elaborate on what steps are being taken to promote more co-operation and collaboration between the public and private sectors in AI development and utilisation?

The interaction between the public and private sectors is crucial in this, as it is in many other areas. UKRI is leading a number of public programmes which support universities and the ability to get spin-outs and developments from them, so there is considerable interaction at the beginning of the process. There is also interaction throughout the process; for example, the AI Security Institute is working with some of the largest companies and looking at their models to ensure that, as they are developed, issues that could come up are foreseen and, we hope, mitigated in advance. Collaboration between the public and private sectors is crucial in AI, as in many areas of technology development.

My Lords, the Government have agreed to create a new function—UK sovereign AI—to partner with the private sector and maximise the UK’s stake in what is described as frontier AI. Further details were promised by spring 2025. By my calculation, spring is over. What powers will this unit have to invest directly in companies, create joint ventures or provide advanced market commitments, as recommended in the plan, and how will it ensure economic benefit and influence on AI governance in the UK?

AI sovereignty is a crucial issue. It ranges from questions of what infrastructure and companies we need in this country to what public work we need to do to make sure that we can access the AI required. AI sovereignty is very much part of the AI action plan; the spending review is under way and there will be more information on what exactly will happen in its different areas post spending review. The areas the noble Lord raises are all important—they are the right ones. Spring is nearly over. It will not be in spring, but we hope to give more information shortly.

My Lords, the press have indicated that there could be enormous improvements in public sector productivity if AI were introduced. What savings might be made in the public sector if we introduce AI?

A series of funded programmes have been looking at the introduction of AI in government in particular. Some reports were published in the last couple of weeks showing time savings and degree of satisfaction, and identifying where the use of AI will be most useful and where it will be problematic. There are already some outputs from that work in the public domain. We will continue to make them public as we assess the performance of AI in government systems. A unit called i.AI is developing new approaches, such as Humphrey, which have been widely publicised.

My Lords, I declare my tech interests as set out in the register. We welcome the GDS report, to which the Minister referred, on driving tactical productivity improvements in the Civil Service with AI tools. Does he agree that to realise deep strategic change through AI in the Civil Service will require a hugely ambitious digital transformation? Are the Government being realistic about how challenging this is likely to be? How will they keep Parliament updated on their approach and progress?

Oddly enough, I am aware of how difficult this is and how much work is needed. The requirements range from data to the ability to get it into a form that can be read and be interoperable; that is behind the national data library and the health data research service which we have announced. There are skills issues right across the Civil Service and elsewhere which need to be addressed, with skills increased, along with the application uptake of AI by businesses across the UK. All those are part of the AI Opportunities Action Plan, and there are things under way in each of those areas. I do not think this is straightforward. It will require some experimentation. There will be some things that will not work as well as expected and others that we will need to move faster on. I expect this to be a very dynamic field over the next few years.

My Lords, a strong emphasis in the AI Opportunities Action Plan is the development of human capital to maintain the UK as one of the leading countries in the world for AI. In the last four years for which the figures are available there has been a decrease of 39% in the percentage of UK-domiciled computer science graduates undertaking doctorates. This year, the situation is likely to be even worse, as for the first time EU students finishing a four-year undergraduate course in the UK will no longer count as home students. Is the Minister as concerned as I am by the sharp decrease in home students undertaking PhDs in computer science and AI? Are the Government considering any measures to reverse this trend, perhaps by reducing the interest rate on undergraduate loans to zero while graduate students are doing their PhDs?

As the noble Lord points out, there has been a decrease in PhD funding through UKRI from 2018 to 2022. The overall number of PhD students has not gone down, but the sources of funding have become more diversified. It is an important issue for the UK to be good and capable in the numbers of PhD students we have. Two new programmes are being developed as part of the AI opportunities plan: the AI fellowship programme and the AI scholarship programme. Both will be important to ensure that we have the skills we need to deliver on the plan. I take the point about the number of students who have gone from computer science into PhDs. That is an area that we need to look at and understand. As the noble Lord is aware, some of it is a classification question, in relation to EU students, but there is no doubt that we need to keep the number of students doing PhDs up.

My Lords, to follow on from the noble Lord’s point about skills, behind the flashiness and excitement of AI lie some boring things that have to be done. One of the big challenges to support an AI ecosystem in the UK is the byzantine procurement rules of government. Can the Minister tell us what he is doing to ensure that small and growing British-based AI companies have a crack at getting government contracts and therefore growing?

This is an area close to my heart. It is a crucial part of stimulating innovation right across the patch. Government procurement ought to be a way in which innovation companies get their first indication of a signal, in many cases, of a potential customer. A commercial innovation hub has been set up in the Cabinet Office, precisely to try to make it much easier to deal with SMEs and others, which has historically been extremely difficult to do from a government procurement perspective.