UK government to throw £7 million at 120 AI projects

Projects will receive a share of a £7 million funding pot – so were that to be split equally it would come out at £58,333 each. The intention is that these projects throw up some insights as to how AI could ‘turbocharge’ businesses in the UK.

The funding comes from the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Technology Missions Fund, and is delivered by the Innovate UK BridgeAI programme.

It is focused on how AI could help smaller companies tackle challenges, and how researchers can use this tech to take on “everyday problems we all live with.” As well as the funding, the the BridgeAI programme will allow businesses to tap into training and scientific expertise, and offer wider guidance on how to develop their AI projects, states the release.

The announcement points to projects using AI to cut food waste at a bakery by predicting sales and forecasting how much of each product needs to be made daily, road-testing an AI tool that can predict potholes before they form, and an AI model that anticipates where mould is likely to grow in buildings. Tech to help strawberry farmers protect their yields, and tools to help town planners predict their area’s future transport needs are mentioned as well.

There’s also £1 million of funding to develop bespoke AI tools to “support teachers and transform education.”

“Putting AI to work right across the economy can help businesses cut waste, move faster and be more productive,” said Science and Technology Secretary Peter Kyle. “The huge range of projects receiving funding today, from farmers and bakers to those tackling potholes on our roads and mould in residential properties, demonstrates the truly limitless benefits of AI that are there for the taking.

“And take them we will, with our 50-point AI Opportunities Plan, published yesterday, to unleash AI across the UK, delivering a decade of national renewal and firing up our Plan for Change.

Dr Kedar Pandya, UKRI Technology Missions Fund Senior Responsible Owner and Executive Director of Cross-Council programme at UKRI’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, added: “Today’s investment, funded through UKRI’s Technology Missions Fund, is a major boost to the BridgeAI's target sectors where the adoption of AI technologies could help to improve productivity and efficiency.

“UKRI is in a unique position to bring together businesses and research organisations across a wide range of sectors to discover where AI can make the most difference to people’s lives and the UK economy.”

Yesterday the government announced it is “throwing the full weight of Whitehall” behind the AI industry with the AI Opportunities Action Plan. It includes initiatives such as AI Growth Zones to speed up planning proposals and build more AI infrastructure, and plans to increase the “public compute capacity by twentyfold” which will start with a new supercomputer, and a new National Data Library.

The assertion is that hooking up all sorts of public services to AI systems will generally improve the functioning of the nation. “If fully realised, these gains could be worth up to an average £47 billion to the UK each year over a decade,” stated the release yesterday.

£7 million in funding may well end up helping spur on some interesting AI projects, and more power to them if that’s the case. But that money is split quite a few ways, and the ambitions of what will be borne from these projects is lofty to say the least. There’s a similar issue with an initiative announced last September which pledged an £11.5 million pot of grants to be shared by 16 projects linked to the semiconductor industry in an attempt to improve the UK’s standing on that front.

Neither pots of money are in the same ballpark as what private investment is throwing at the wall, and in terms of publicly funded initiatives around the world, the European Union has made an €11 billion semiconductor funding commitment, and the US $52 billion.

Perhaps the most significant part of yesterday’s announcement was that three tech companies – Vantage Data Centres, Nscale and Kyndryl – will put a £14 billion investment into the UK to build AI infrastructure – which if you’re talking about transforming the nation with the stuff, it sounds like the sort of money that is a bit more like it.

Still, something is better than nothing and there is an obvious argument against the government spending a significantly greater amount of public money on such schemes in the context of the country's current economic outlook. The government is clearly committed to raising a flag for AI in the UK, so we can probably expect more projects and initiatives to come.