The UK’s prime minister and technology secretary have announced £100 million initial funding to jumpstart the implementation of the government’s key objectives for establishing safe and dependable foundation models in the UK.
Modelled after the COVID-19 Vaccines Taskforce, it will promote the safe and dependable usage of pivotal AI technology throughout the economy and ensure the UK’s position as a competitive nation in this technology.
Foundation models such as ChatGPT and Google Bard, are a type of AI systems that undergo extensive training on vast amounts of data, such as text, images, video, or audio, to acquire advanced and diverse capabilities across numerous tasks.
Leverage AI in the UK
Although it’s yet to reach global adoption, AI could contribute billions of pounds to the UK’s GDP and it’ll be the job of the taskforce to deliver on the prime minister’s priorities to grow the economy.
UK prime minister Rishi Sunak said, “By investing in emerging technologies through our new expert taskforce, we can continue to lead the way in developing safe and trustworthy AI as part of shaping a more innovative UK economy.
“Harnessing the potential of AI provides enormous opportunities to grow our economy, create better-paid jobs, and build a better future through advances in healthcare and security.”
As OpenAI CEO Sam Altman previously stated in an interview, AI will have enormous potential in areas like healthcare by speeding up diagnoses, drug discovery and development. And in education, the nascent technology could, “Transform teachers’ day-to-day work, freeing up their time to focus on delivering excellent teaching.”
The funding will be invested by the Foundation Model Taskforce in infrastructure and public service procurement, to create opportunities for domestic innovation. The first pilots targeting public services are expected to launch in the next six months.
Isa Muhammad is a writer and video game journalist covering many aspects of entertainment media including the film industry. He's steadily writing his way to the sharp end of journalism and enjoys staying informed. If he's not reading, playing video games or catching up on his favourite TV series, then he's probably writing about them.
