In 2023, the U.K. made a big song and dance about the need to consider the harms of AI, giving itself a leading role in the wider conversation around AI safety. Now, it’s whistling a very different tune: today, the government announced a sweeping plan and a big bet on AI investments to develop what it calls a “decade of national renewal.”
Included in the so-called “Plan for Change” will be a commitment to invest in AI to speed up public sector services; set up geographic “AI Growth Zones” to greenlight the building of AI infrastructure such as data centres and R&D areas; and a claim that private tech firms have pledged investments of £14 billion ($17 billion) and the creation of 13,250 jobs to meet this goal.
There will be more details released later in the day on action items. Some that have already been revealed include naming Culham, Oxfordshire, as the first “AI Growth Zone”; increasing public compute capacity by twentyfold and working on a new supercomputer. There’s also a new National Data Library that will be the U.K.’s way to store and use public data for AI development, and a new Energy Council that will consider how to handle the energy demands of AI.
The government says its plan is based on 50 recommendations that were laid out previously by Matt Clifford, a venture capitalist who has been advising both the current and previous administrations and published an “AI Opportunities Action Plan” in July 2024 to lay these out.
The government today wasted very little time in trying to score a political point by noting that the outgoing government never formally said it would take these recommendations forward, while it is now “backing AI to the hilt”. (The proof will be in the pudding, of course.)
It’s very notable that the words “safety,” “harm,” “existential” and “threat” are nowhere to be found in the announcement. These are not just terms that have been raised in connection with the full-throttle embrace of AI, but specifically part of the U.K.’s own sceptical regard of the technology in previous times. It’s not that these are no longer concerns for anyone, but it seems they are no longer on the agenda for the government to address while it figures out how to profit from AI.
“Artificial Intelligence will drive incredible change in our country,” Prime Minister Keir Starmer said in a statement today. “But the AI industry needs a government that is on their side, one that won’t sit back and let opportunities slip through its fingers. And in a world of fierce competition, we cannot stand by. We must move fast and take action to win the global race. Our plan will make Britain the world leader.”