Rishi Sunak unveils £34 million for AI research and bursaries

Rishi Sunak has announced a new £34 million artificial intelligence fund that will create 2,000 scholarships for disadvantaged students in England.

In a speech to the Conservative Party conference in Manchester, the chancellor said the cash – which will also increase the number of world-leading AI researchers coming to the UK under the Turing AI fellowship scheme – would confirm Britain’s position as a “science superpower”.

The new measures would help to ensure that the UK remains “a global leader” in artificial intelligence, said Mr Sunak, stating that the technology could be worth about £200 billion a year to the economy in increased productivity, similar to the impact of the steam engine, computers and the internet.

“As the latest general-purpose technology, AI has the potential to completely transform whole economies and societies,” Mr Sunak told conference delegates on 4 October.

“We want the UK to be a scientific superpower but also a high-skilled, high-tech economy.”

The funding includes £23 million to double the number of available scholarships for AI and data science master’s courses for disadvantaged students, creating an additional 2,000 scholarships in England, and £11 million to double the number of Turing world-leading researcher fellows, supporting an extra five fellows and their projects.

“This new fund will allow more young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to learn new skills and train up for the jobs of tomorrow in the new and exciting industries of the future such as AI,” said Mr Sunak.

The announcement follows last month’s unveiling of the UK’s 10-year National Artificial Intelligence Strategy with the aim of securing the country’s place as “a global AI superpower”, with the Google-owned DeepMind, Benevolent AI, Graphcore and Darktrace among some of the leading AI firms based in the UK.

Earlier this year, the first five Turing Artificial Intelligence (AI) World-Leading Researcher Fellows were named as part of an £18 million investment by UK Research and Innovation, which also saw a further £15.7 million invested by firms including IBM, AstraZeneca and Facebook.

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com