back to article Britain publishes 10-year National Artificial Intelligence Strategy

The UK government has published its much-awaited National AI Strategy in pursuit of "global science superpower" status. The document talks of plans for a "new national programme and approach to support research and development" plus a government white paper on the governance and regulation of AI [PDF]. Details of the strategy …

  1. Nafesy
    Flame

    The Irony

    Surely the government is already an artificial intelligence superpower... albeit in the literal sense of having only intelligence which is artificial.

    1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      Re: The Irony

      With such limitless resources of fine bespoke hand crafted genuine artisanal stupid available

    2. LionelB Silver badge

      Re: The Irony

      Or, if you prefer, in the sense that the label "intelligence" is highly debatable.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: The Irony

      >Surely the government is already an artificial intelligence superpower

      Nah. If you look in the cabinet there is no intelligence to speak of. Thicker than a polar bear's dinner jacket, the lot of them.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Audit on AI computing capacity

    The problem with this is that they will say "ooh it's very expensive - can't we just use AWS machine learning services?"

    And when we all start to use AWS then all AI problems will start to look like a nail.

  3. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    Another Homegrown Unbeatable BRItish System.

  4. Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
    Happy

    Can we

    start with some in 10 downing street?

  5. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    Didn't you get the Memo ....‘I’m afraid there is no money.’ * Time to wise up.

    If you want to make real money with AI [although that is always somewhat oxymoronic], avoid 10/11 Downing Street like the plague. They are not there to help you make a fortune. No one there has any great money of their own to spend and invest as they all existing on state benefits and only deliver you, whenever they conspire to supply, future imaginary wealth stolen from pensions and the earnings of future generations. Although whenever one thinks hard and deep about it, that appears to be how most all taxation dependent systems with compounding interest and fiscal debt and trade deficit mechanisms can only work and survive with the spreading of doom and gloom like a parasitic virus on the body of humanity.

    * Déjà vu again, only this time with everything much worse ? .......https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/09/liam-byrne-apology-letter-there-is-no-money-labour-general-election

    And how quickly everyone forgets, or is denied general knowledge of, this Margaret Thatcher gem ...... Society? There is no such thing!

    1. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

      Re: Didn't you get the Memo ....‘I’m afraid there is no money.’ * Time to wise up.

      And that view/opinion/revelation/inconvenient truth is a constant endemic fundamental systemic vulnerability for spectacular exploitation, and that exploitation increasingly by sources and forces immune from censure and way beyond any practical traditional command and control/conventional power and energy management.

      Indeed, rapid developments in that very specific and peculiarly particular field of remote engagement and virtual endeavour very quickly and easily wrest power and leverage away from current historically heuristically formed, hierarchically elite executive bases.

      Even the simple acknowledgement of any or all of the above is enough to render such disgraced and disgracefully corrupt and perverse universal systems of base elemental control damaged beyond economical repair and enthusiastic ethical support ....... however that will not stop those with very little in the way of great common sense throwing everything, including the kitchen sink, at it and IT and AI to prove the premise wrong and in so doing prove it demonstrably right ...... and in so doing identify themselves as the enemy within to be dealt with.

      The danger and resultant conclusion then being that the enemy within is dealt with in Squid Game elimination style .... in order to make a way for progress to flow rather than be serially hindered ‽ .

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    ROFL

    Seriously....

    ROFL

    Any company that does anything worthwhile will be bought out (probably by the Chinese) and the technology lost.

    I would not recommend IT in any shape or form to a young person as a worthwhile career in this country.

    Become a beancounter or a corporate lawyer. Companies are run by them. They make the decisions to send our jobs to India (and a few dozen other countries).

    Better still get out ASAP. If I wasn't an old crusty I'd be on my way.

  7. Jim Whitaker
    Facepalm

    10-year plans

    The idea that any government, never mind this one, can do anything meaningful to determine what is going to happen in ten years time is ludicrous. Most especially in a highly speculative, technology driven activity like this.

  8. Cuddles

    Global science superpower

    "Catastrophic" cuts to the UK's science budget could result in top scientists leaving the country, a Nobel laureate has warned." - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-56587811

    And remember how the Tories have been treating science for more than a decade now? "UK science funding bodies have learned that they will have to absorb cuts of 41%" - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12021483

    But sure, some waffle about AI is going to turn us into a science superpower.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    10 Year National Strategy on AI ?

    5 second job: It's just a blank page with a shrug emoji on it.

    1. jake Silver badge

      Re: 10 Year National Strategy on AI ?

      Or take a leaf out of IBM's book:

      THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK

      On the diagonal, of course.

  10. A Nother Handle
    Mushroom

    What a load of hot air

    We cannot allow a data patent gap!

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I read the report.......

    .....and although there is fluff about "public trust in AI" (yup...an actual quote)......the report buries the definition of "AI" on page 10!!!

    *

    "public" -- do the "public" know anything about "AI"....say, enough to express "trust"?

    *

    And do the "public" know anything about selling NHS data assets (hint: medical records about all of the "public") to evil right-wing a**holes like Peter Thiel?

    *

    That would be "No" and "No"................

    *

    35 page report....mostly fluff.....the civil servants who wrote this c**p should be ashamed of themselves!! The "public" deserve better......................

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I seem to remember every government

    since Harold Wilson's "white heat of technology" speech, making the same sort off ridiculous" we will be the greatest" pronouncement about, well, whatever happens to be the future dead cert product of some unspecified tomorrow. It never happens. Remember electricity too cheap to meter?

    1. jake Silver badge

      Re: I seem to remember every government

      "Remember electricity too cheap to meter?"

      It was going to happen, until the hippies managed to vilify nuclear power. Makes me laugh at the same hippies espousing all-electric cars in these days of brown and blackouts dues to lack of power ...

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