"Today together with our talented Science, Innovation and
Technology Secretary, I also take measures to strengthen our
position in artificial intelligence, where the UK hosts one third
of all European companies.
I am accepting all nine of the digital technology recommendations
made by Sir in the review I asked him
to do in the Autumn Statement. That means I can report to the
House that we will: …launch an AI sandbox to trial new, faster
approaches to help innovators get cutting edge products to
market; …work at pace with the Intellectual Property Office to
provide clarity on IP rules so Generative AI companies can access
the material they need; ……and ask Sir Patrick's successor, Dame
Professor , to report before the summer
on options around the Growth Duty for regulators.
Because AI needs computing horsepower, I today commit around
£900m of funding to implement the recommendations in the
independent Future of Compute Review for an Exascale
supercomputer. The power that AI’s complex algorithms need can
also be provided by quantum computing. So today we publish a
quantum strategy which will set our vision to be a world leading
quantum enabled economy by 2033 with a research and innovation
programme totalling £2.5 billion.
I also want to encourage the best AI research to happen in the UK
so will award a prize of £1m every year, for the next ten years,
to the person or team that does the most ground-breaking AI
research. The world’s first stored-programme computer was built
at the University of Manchester in 1948, and was known as the
“Manchester baby”. 75 years on, the baby has grown up, so I will
call this new national AI award “the Manchester Prize” in its
honour."
