Channel partners and marketing experts have cautiously welcomed government plans to make the UK a “world leader” in AI.
In a “marked move from the previous government”, Keir Starmer has agreed to take forward all 50 recommendations set out by Matt Clifford in his AI Opportunities Action Plan.
Key initiatives include the creation of new ‘AI Growth Zones’ to speed up planning proposals and build more AI infrastructure, boosting public compute capacity twentyfold, and creating a new National Data Library.
“Artificial Intelligence will drive incredible change in our country. From teachers personalising lessons, to supporting small businesses with their record-keeping, to speeding up planning applications, it has the potential to transform the lives of working people,” Starmer said.
“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.”
Though broadly welcomed, Starmer’s plans immediately faced criticism on several fronts, including those worried about abandoning a safety-first approach to AI and the environmental costs involved. Others argued his rhetoric is not allied to true pro-business policies.
But what do the leaders of channel partners dealing with the daily realities of delivering AI to businesses and public sector organisations think of the plans?
IT Channel Oxygen grabbed leaders from Wanstor, Chorus, Transparity and Ancoris – as well as two AI marketing experts – to get the view from the ground.
“UK can be world’s best place to invest in AI if we get this right”
Andre Azevedo, CEO of Google partner Ancoris
What’s your snap reaction to yesterday’s announcement?
The proof will be in the pudding as always, but this is a very welcome announcement. Although AI needs to be adopted securely and safely, the public sector needs to get on with it, and quickly. The opportunity to improve citizen experience, generate efficiency and enable innovation across the sector is enormous and we are in a unique position to grab this opportunity. The UK can arguably be the world’s best place to invest in AI in the next few years if we get this right. We speak the world’s lingua franca, we have incredible universities and research centres, and political stability which can be turned into an advantage in a world of constant change.
Also, the tax burden is already at high levels and AI adoption must be the answer to improve productivity and public service output without increasing Opex budgets.
As a partner which deals with the realities of delivering AI to business customers every day, what’s your one piece of advice for the new government regarding how it approaches AI growth and regulation?
This is the same we tell our customers across all other industries. The biggest piece of advice I would give is to use a “goldilocks” approach and do it “just right”. Organisations that aren’t succeeding in this space tend to either go too wide or too narrow in their AI adoption strategy. This means that they tend to get bogged down in trying to define the entire organisational strategy for AI, and not get anything done, or focus on very narrow use cases, often experimental, that aren’t that important to the organisation. To succeed, we recommend customers focus on the outcome to begin with, define a solid business case and implement something that is meaningful but can be delivered quickly and improved from there.
AI specialists like us can definitely help with defining that.
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