British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has announced plans to make the UK an AI (artificial intelligence) “superpower,” promising a pro-innovation approach to AI regulation, making public data available to researchers, and creating zones for data centres.
Starmer, whose Labour government faces spending cuts due to increasing borrowing costs, said his aim is to put AI at the heart of his economic growth strategy.
The government has projected that AI technology could increase productivity by 1.5% annually, adding an extra £47 billion ($57 billion) to the economy each year over the next decade.
“Britain will be one of the great AI superpowers,” Starmer said on Monday at University College London, highlighting that the UK is already the European leader in AI investment. “We’re going to make the breakthroughs, create the wealth, and make AI work for everyone in our country.”
Countries globally are competing to become AI hubs by balancing growth with the necessary technology restrictions. Currently, the UK, the world’s sixth-largest economy, ranks just behind the United States and China in AI investment and patents, according to Stanford University.
Starmer also emphasized that Britain would pursue a “pro-growth and pro-innovation” regulatory path.
In his words;
“We are now in control of our regulatory regime, so we will go our own way on this,” he said, referencing the UK’s departure from the European Union in 2020. “We will test and understand AI before we regulate it to ensure our approach is proportionate and grounded.”
The UK plans to make public data, including information from its state health service, accessible to researchers through a “National Data Library,” subject to trusted copyright rules. The government will also implement all 50 recommendations from the “AI Opportunities Action Plan” report by venture capitalist Matt Clifford.
This will include accelerating planning permission and energy connections for data centres, with the first such centre to be built in Culham, Oxfordshire, home to Britain’s Atomic Energy Authority.
This is coming at a time when Britain’s economy is in need of fresh momentum, especially after the Labour government’s highest tax-raising budget since 1993 dented business confidence.
Just recently, the Bank of England recently estimated that the economy did not grow in the last quarter.
