The UK has consistently punched above its weight in AI development. With Keir Starmer's recent push to position Britain as an AI superpower, particularly in natural language processing and machine learning research, there's a renewed focus on this ambition. Meanwhile, we're seeing significant shifts in the global AI landscape, with major developments in the US, China, and emerging tech hubs.
Spicerack's founder Dave asked Justin, Partner / CTO, to share his perspective on the UK's current competitive advantages in AI. They focused on areas relevant to enterprise solutions, and what unique opportunities Justin sees for UK businesses leveraging AI in 2025. As follows are his thoughts:
The reality is that we are already far behind the US and China, which is sad when you consider that 10 years ago, some of the most pioneering work in what is now generative AI was spearheaded by UK academics and entrepreneurs. The government has at least recognised this and, with the AI Opportunities Action Plan, is looking to invest in key areas that should accelerate the growth of a knowledge economy.
Our education system is woefully behind China’s in terms of creating the necessary academic skills and numbers of researchers within the timeframe that is needed to compete with them. The plan to fast-track data centres is great, but is the National Grid up to the task of delivering the power required, and can we grow our power generation fast enough and meet our COP targets? Our nuclear industry is behind, and we can only deploy so much wind and solar energy. Rumour has it that the US is deploying smaller-scale fusion reactors near new data centres; elsewhere in Europe, serious headway is being made into underground “battery” storage of renewably generated power. The UK has to level up in this area quickly.
That said, there are clear opportunities for start-ups and enterprises to embrace and pivot towards an AI-enhanced future, especially in areas such as robotics, synthetic biology and health care. There's also significant potential for growth in training, learning, education and EdTech, and the businesses in these sectors that embrace AI in their products and services will be in a great place to capitalise on this.
The AI Opportunities Action Plan also outlines steps to make deep data sets available to AI providers rapidly. My concern here is that these AI providers will not be UK companies; we will be handing further competitive advantage to the US. The value of domain-specific data sets will increase over the coming decade, and they will be the main point of differentiation between general-purpose foundational models and more highly specialised models. It will be these specialised models that enable UK companies to build moats that will drive growth and competition with the US and Chinese AI mega-corps.
To maintain our position and potentially grow our influence in the global AI landscape, the UK faces a critical challenge: attracting and retaining the level of investment currently flowing into US and Chinese AI companies, while maintaining our commitment to ethical AI development. This balance between competitive advantage and ethical considerations will be crucial in determining our future role in the global AI ecosystem.
