AI Sector Deal (2018)
Overview of the strategy
The United Kingdom’s strategy has 5 areas of focus:
1. Investment
- Raise total R&D investment in AI technologies to 2.4% of GDP by 2027
- Invest up to £20 million in the application of AI in the services sector
2. Education
- Develop a prestigious global Turing Fellowship program to both attract and retain the best research talent in AI
- Build towards an additional 200 doctoral studentships in AI by 2020-2021
- Invest £406m in skills like math, digital, and technical education and support 8,000 computer science teachers
3. Infrastructure
- Publish more high-quality public data in an open, easily findable, and reusable format
- Provide legal certainty over the sharing and use of data
- Work with major stakeholders to identify barriers to sharing data
- Explore frameworks like ‘data trusts’ for mechanisms to share data
- Invest over £1 billion to develop 5G
4. Business environment
- Establish a new Office for Artificial Intelligence to work with the AI Council to create and deliver the AI strategy
- Establish a new £2.5bn Investment Fund incubated in the British Business Bank
5. Places
- Invest £21 million to support regional tech companies and startups
- Invest over £1bn in digital infrastructure
Data governance in the strategy
- Does the AI plan mention data governance?
Yes
- Does the AI plan discuss open public data?
Yes; the strategy suggests publishing more high-quality public data in an open, easily findable, and reusable format.
- Does the AI plan discuss proprietary data?
Yes; the strategy acknowledges that some of the most important datasets contain commercially sensitive information and that data trusts can be used to address this issue.
- Does the AI plan discuss personal data?
Yes; data trusts are also suggested as a possible solution to dealing with privacy issues.
- Does the AI plan discuss the mixing of data (hybrid)?
No; the strategy does not explicitly address the mixing of data but does suggest the use of data trusts to increase the sharing of different datasets.
- Has the government consulted with the public on its AI strategy?
No; however, the United Kingdom has had a public consultation on data governance. The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport have also conducted a public consultation on the use of smart data.