Government encourages greater use of AI in health & public safety

Ahead of the AI Safety Summit, which starts tomorrow (1 November 2023), the government has made a series of funding and strategy announcements intended to put AI to work improving the lives of citizens in the UK.

The two-day Summit at Bletchley Park will bring together governments, academia, tech suppliers and civil society groups to discuss how to best manage the risks from the most recent advances in AI.

Last week, Rishi Sunak?announced?￡100m investment to accelerate the use of AI for earlier diagnosis in key disease areas and faster drug discovery. The funding, which is subject to a full business case, will target opportunities to test and trial new technologies in clinical settings, improve health outcomes across a range of conditions, and drive novel AI research.

The announcement was followed by yesterday’s news that?￡21m is being allocated to 64 NHS trusts across England to roll out AI tools?to speed up the diagnosis and treatment of lung cancer. These investments follow the?￡30m funding?that was made available to Integrated Care Systems to invest in new technologies, which was announced at the beginning of October, as the government seeks to recover core NHS services and improve productivity in healthcare. For further discussion see TechMarketView’s recent?Health Suppliers, Trends, and Forecasts 2023-2026?report (https://www.techmarketview.com/news/archive/2023/10/27/new-research-health-suppliers-trends-and-forecasts-2023-2026).

There have also been new announcements about the role of AI in public safety. The Policing Minister, Chris Phelp, has?written?to Chief Constables and Police and Crime Commissioners, to encourage police forces to make greater use of facial recognition technology. This includes setting a target to double the number of searches made using retrospective facial recognition technology by May 2024 and reiterating his encouragement of police forces to operate live facial recognition.

Yesterday, the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, also hosted an event in partnership with the Internet Watch Foundation to help tackle the threat of child sexual abuse material generated by AI. Attendees including governments, tech suppliers, law enforcement organisations and charities came together to sign a?statement?pledging to cooperate to mitigate the spread of this content.

The government has also announced further details of the 12 new Centres for Doctoral Training (CDT) in AI that will benefit from ￡117m in funding. The UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) funding, which was?announced?in September, will help train doctoral researchers in AI with the first cohort starting in the 2024-25 academic year—it follows the ￡100m?investment in 2018?that supported CDTs at 14 universities and included partnerships with over 300 organisations. The government has also created a ￡1m AI Futures Grants scheme to support AI researchers and engineers from around the world to relocate to the UK and announced?￡2m investment in Oak National Academy?to improve and expand AI tools for teachers.

We can expect further announcements over the next couple of days as the government seeks to use the AI Safety Summit to help establish the UK’s position as a global leader in safe application of AI technology.

This article by TechMarketView Senior Research Director Dale Peters first appeared in UKHotViews - to read more & sign up to the daily newsletter see: https://www.techmarketview.com/ukhotviews/