UK will implement AI in public services to make them “more human”

The United Kingdom will implement artificial intelligence (AI) in its public services to make them “more human”, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced this Monday (13), who seeks to boost this technology in the country to transform it. it into a “global superpower” in the sector.

“That’s the irony of AI, that it will make public services more human,” Starmer said at the launch of the country’s AI Action Plan, which aims to accelerate public services and serve as a boost to the economy.

The plan includes 50 recommendations prepared by a team led by Matt Clifford, technology entrepreneur and president of the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (Aria), in the form of a roadmap for the effective development of this technology.

The UK government wants to make the country “irresistible” to AI companies looking to start, expand or grow their businesses, receiving an estimated £14 billion in investment from big tech companies that will translate into 13,250 jobs.

He questioned whether the UK wants to be an “AI maker or taker” as “the investors, entrepreneurs and researchers who will make these discoveries are looking for places all over the world to set up shop”.

The British government will create “AI growth zones” by building data centers across the country, for which “planning permissions” will be fast-tracked, Starmer promised representatives of technology companies at the Global University London campus.

The first of these centers will be located in Culham, in Oxfordshire, in the south of England, headquarters of the Atomic Energy Authority, and he stated that this infrastructure will be installed in the most deindustrialized regions of the country and promised to accelerate connections to the electrical grid for companies AI companies setting up shop in the UK.

Regarding the risks involved in the use of AI, the Prime Minister praised the previous Conservative government’s decision to create the Artificial Intelligence Security Institute, the first institution in the world to guarantee the protection of this technology.

He also announced the creation of a supercomputer with enough AI power to “play chess half a million times a second,” which will increase computing power 20-fold by 2030 and drive the creation of such products.

In everyday public services, the UK government will look to AI to “save hundreds of thousands of hours lost due to no-shows because it can identify the people on the list who are most likely to not show up and help them to get the support they need, perhaps exchanging them for a more convenient appointment”, he explained.

According to the Labor prime minister, AI can identify problems more quickly, speed up planning, reduce form-filling in job centers, help in the fight against tax evasion and almost halve the time social workers spend on paperwork.

The UK government will also create a team to keep the country at the forefront of technology, including Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry Demis Hassabis, one of the world’s leading advocates for AI regulation.