Guidance

Achievements under the AI Sector Deal

Published 10 May 2021

Creating an economy that harnesses AI and data is one of the great opportunities of our age.

This AI Sector Deal was the first commitment from government, industry and academia to realise this technology’s potential, outlining a package of near £1 billion of support for the sector.

Business environment

The AI Council was established, with Tabitha Goldstaub as the AI Council Chair and Business Champion; Dame Wendy Hall as the Skills Champion; and Demis Hassabis as the Advisor to the Office for AI.

The AI Council published its AI Roadmap in January 2021. The independent report provides recommendations to help the government’s strategic direction on AI.

People

To develop the right skills for the jobs of the future and to create the environment for AI development and deployment, we announced:

• 16 new AI Centres for Doctoral Training at universities across the country, backed by up to £100 million and delivering 1,000 new PhDs over five years.
• new prestigious Turing AI Fellowships, backed by £46 million, to attract and retain top AI talent.
• industry-funding for new AI Masters places. Since April 2019 the following companies have funded additional AI Masters places and/or work-based placements: Accenture; Adarga; Aggreko; AMPLYFI; BAE Systems; Bering; Cambridge Consultants; Cisco; Cyanapse; The Data Analyst Bureau; DeepMind; Intel; Kainos; Protect Box; QuantumBlack; The Data Lab; Welsh Water; Zeg.ai.
• up to 2,500 places for AI and data science conversion courses. This includes up to 1,000 government-funded scholarships.

Infrastructure

To facilitate legal, fair, ethical and safe data sharing that is scalable and portable to stimulate AI technology innovation, we:

• partnered with the Open Data Institute and Innovate UK on three Data Trust pilots, tackling illegal wildlife trade, reducing food waste, and improving public services in the Royal Borough of Greenwich, London.

Place

To work closely with key clusters to provide the support needed for AI businesses to thrive, we:

• commissioned GDS to deliver the Review of AI adoption in the Public sector, and published A guide to using artificial intelligence in the public sector.
• published Guidelines on AI Procurement in collaboration with the World Economic Forum Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution. These will inform and empower buyers in the public sector, helping them to evaluate suppliers, then confidently and responsibly procure AI technologies for the benefit of citizens.
• published Explaining decisions made with AI . Co-badged guidance by the ICO and The Alan Turing Institute to give organisations practical advice to help explain the processes, services and decisions delivered or assisted by AI, to the individuals affected by them.
• launched Tech Nation’s Applied AI growth programme with 29 participating AI firms, from across the regions including Scotland and Wales. After a successful first year we announced 32 firms who joined Applied AI 2.0. 44 per cent were founded by women and two thirds are based outside of London.
• funded up to £100 million for five new Centres of Excellence for digital pathology and imaging with AI, including radiology, using AI medical advances.
• funded £30 million for the new Bayes Centre in Edinburgh, a world-leading centre of data science and AI.
• launched the AI Dynamic Purchasing System (DPS), a new procurement framework that offers public sector customers a direct route to AI services in an emerging market.
• published the Ethics, Transparency and Accountability Framework for Automated Decision-making. A framework to guide the safe and ethical use of algorithms and automated systems for public sector organisations.

Ideas

We have supported the development and delivery of the Early Diagnosis Mission - which is to use data, AI and innovation to transform prevention, early diagnosis and treatment of chronic diseases.

In addition we are committing to work with the private sector to boost research and development. We have:

• funded £3 million for three new research projects to investigate how businesses can make best use of AI in insurance and law as well as analysing consumer attitudes to AI.
• announced up to £79 million for three new AI programmes to transform engineering, urban planning and healthcare.
• announced £600,000 funding for UK-Korea Health Sciences collaboration to focus on better diagnosis of dementia through the use of AI.
• funded 40 artificial intelligence and data analytics projects, backed by £13 million in government investments to boost productivity and improve customer service.
• ensured part of the £50 million government funding to the Derry City and Strabane Region City Deal will include development of a new research and design facility, the Centre for Industrial Digitisation, Robotics and Automation.
• Launched The Hartree National Centre for Digital Innovation (HNCDI), a new AI and quantum computing centre in North West England. The Centre is backed by a £210 million investment from the government (£172 million over 5 years) and IBM (£38 million), supporting 60 new scientific jobs in the Liverpool City Region.

International

The UK became a founding member of the Global Partnership on AI, an international and multistakeholder initiative to guide the responsible development and use of AI, grounded in human rights, inclusion, diversity, innovation, and economic growth.

• GPAI’s four working groups will each focus on: data governance; responsible AI; commercialisation of AI; and the future of work.
• senior UK experts from industry and academia have joined the four working groups.

The UK and the US signed a Statement of Intent on Cooperation in AI Research and Development.

• the Statement of Intent outlines a joint commitment to the development of responsible AI technologies with the overall ambition to harness the energy of public and private partnerships, to enrich the AI R&D enterprise, enhance technology commercialisation and create value for our citizens.
• the Statement will also establish a joint R&D working group to promote strengthened collaboration.
• the UK and US are starting from strong foundations. The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) alone is funding over 100 UK-US AI collaborations.