In the battle for AI, UK plc has a unique opportunity to use fluency in English language to its advantage.
- Goldman Sachs will appoint former partner Tom Montag to its board in bid to shore up support for beleaguered CEO David Solomon.
- KPMG and PwC were fined over botched audits of logistics firm Eddie Stobart.
- The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act came into effect in the US, requiring employers to make “reasonable accommodations” for pregnant and postpartum people.
Rishi Sunak likes to say the UK is a leader in the worldwide race for AI. He needs to look over his shoulder. The latest Tortoise Global AI Index, out this week, reveals that Singapore has overtaken the UK which has slipped to fourth place. (China is second; the US is way out in front in first.)
So what? Predicting the AI-apocalypse is a booming business and people are eager to talk about the need for new rules. But the focus for Britain’s boards should be on adoption rather than regulation. By comparison with other countries, particularly the US, the take up of AI in the UK is slower and the vulnerability of the economy is greater.
“The UK is really good, economically, at using language,” says Tim Gordon, co-founder of Best Practice AI. “We’re good at law, education, journalism and marketing. Generative AI is a missile coming for the UK economy. It’s potentially a big opportunity… but we don’t have corporations leaning into this.”
Sunak will be buoyed by the announcement from Sam Altman that OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT, has chosen London as the home of its first corporate office outside the US.
According to the Global AI Index, the UK received $12.9 billion of inward AI investment between 2013 and 2022 – the third highest in the world and three times as much, per capita, than either Germany or China.
But when it comes to the use of Large Language Models, there are several key areas where UK plc needs to accelerate:
Investment. Over half of generative AI startups (167 out of 309) are based in the US and have taken nearly 70 per cent of global private investment as of June this year. Meanwhile, most of the investment the UK does attract comes from overseas: between 2017 and 2022 under half of the top 500 AI funding rounds were made up of domestic investors from the UK. “Economics will be just as important as the regulation,” says Gordon. “Once the marginal cost of delivering this stuff gets close to zero, it’s going to be very hard for new players to get into the space.”
Talent. Part of Singapore’s ascendancy is due to streamlining the flow of AI talent. Tom Hurd, founder of Zeki Research and former head of UK homeland security, says that large UK companies aren’t getting hold of skilled graduates quick enough and are therefore dependent on outsourcing: “If you’re outsourcing your AI adoption to Poland and India you’re definitely getting DevOps resources much cheaper than in the UK. But are you innovating?”
Culture. A survey by the Institute of Directors found that 80 per cent of its members did not have a process in place to audit their use of AI. “There’s a real distinction between these tools augmenting your workforce’s abilities, and bowing down to the computer’s response to whatever question you ask. That requires a cultural transformation,” says Sana Khareghani, former head of the UK government’s office for AI.
A degree of inertia is normal in the face of sweeping technological change. A decade ago UK firms dithered about adopting cybersecurity – until mass hacks shifted the conversation. That was a defensive play. This is a land grab. Sunak is right to identify the opportunity in the new era of AI, but, it pains Tortoise to say it, the prizes in this race will go to the swift.
