“This is about creating a foundation for everyone to benefit”
Candice Arnold, Chief Revenue Officer of Microsoft partner Wanstor
What’s your snap reaction to yesterday’s announcement?
I’m delighted to see a growth and technology-led ambition shared by our government. AI is an imperative. Given our competitiveness as a nation is impacted by an ageing population and a stagnating economy, an injection of automation and AI is the obvious path to drive sustainable change and improvements. This is an exciting step forward, but for it to succeed, we need to ensure the groundwork is in place. Fiscal policies in the last budget placed heavy cost pressures on industries with modestly paid workers – industries that should be pivotal to adopting AI.
Singapore’s strategy of investing in upskilling and reskilling workers while maintaining a business-friendly environment shows the kind of holistic approach we need to emulate. This isn’t just about chasing innovation; it’s about creating a foundation for everyone to benefit.
As a partner that 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?
For any AI or digital transformation to succeed, we need the right culture, systems, and policies in place to facilitate it. My advice to the government is to be bold and set the vision up for success by addressing the entire ecosystem. This means fixing procurement, investing in talent and reward structures to empower people with the skills and desire to embrace new capabilities, and ensuring the data architecture and security foundations are robust.
Making AI adoption affordable and building public trust with strong ethical frameworks and incentives for innovative companies will ensure that AI drives meaningful, inclusive growth, rather than widening divides or creating new inequalities. There’s a huge opportunity for the UK to lead in this space, but we can’t let traditional thinking or fear of change hold us back.
