What happened:The U.K. government is pouring £100M (US $124M) into the creation of an AI task force that's aimed at boosting the country's AI competitiveness and economy through "sovereign" AI technology.
Details:The task force is charged with creating foundation models or pre-trained AI models like GPT-3 trained on massive datasets to serve as a starting point for more fine-tuned or complex models.
Why it matters:The U.K.'s AI would seek to benefit its public services and the larger economy, with potential contributions from AI in the billions of pounds to its GDP. To promote public trust, the new task force will reportedly work alongside industry to ensure the safe and reliable use of the foundation models. While not nearly as much as Microsoft's $10B investment in OpenAI, the U.K.'s initial $124M will help it grow its "sovereign national capabilities," enabling public services to benefit from AI's transformative impact, the government said.
Zoom out:The U.K.'s government already ranks third out of 181 countries for its "AI Readiness," a measure of how prepared a country is to introduce AI in its delivery of public services. Its latest initiative could accelerate that further, with a greater focus on AI competitiveness with the U.S. and Singapore.
