The government's AI Opportunities Action Plan will help rewire the state to be “restless and relentless”, Keir Starmer has said.
Announcing the plan in a speech this morning at UCL, the prime minister said AI will "turbocharge" every mission in the government’s Plan for Change.
As part of the plan, the government will appoint AI leads for each of its five missions: kickstarting economic growth; making Britain a clean energy superpower; taking back our streets; breaking down barriers to opportunity; and building an NHS fit for the future.
Following July’s general election, the government appointed Matt Clifford, a tech entrepreneur and chair of the Advanced Research and Invention Agency, to create the AI Opportunities Action Plan and "set out a roadmap for government to capture the opportunities of AI to enhance growth and productivity and create tangible benefits for UK citizens”.
The government has today published the plan and its response, in which it has agreed to all 50 recommendations set out by Clifford. Starmer also announced that he will bring Clifford into No.10 to help bring the action plan into force, alongside recent Nobel Peace Prize winner Sir Demis Hassabis.
In his speech, Starmer set out how the plan to embrace AI will help the government to deliver "much bolder" public services.
"I've seen this for myself as a leader of a public service, and this is entirely human, but new technology can provoke a reaction – a sort of fear, an inhibition, a caution, if you like – and because of the fears of a small risk, too often, you miss the massive opportunity," he said. "So we’ve got to challenge that mindset, because actually the far bigger risk is that if we don't go for it, we're left behind by those who do.
"And that's what I mean about totally rewiring government, being emboldened to take risks as our brilliant entrepreneurs do – restless and relentless. Because the prize within our grasp is the path to national renewal and AI is the way to secure growth to raise living standards, put money in people's pockets, create exciting new companies, and transform our public services."
Starmer said AI will also “make public services more human" and "reconnect staff with the reasons that they came into public service in the first place”.
In a press release ahead of the speech, No.10 said that by agreeing to carry out the action plan in full, the PM was “throwing the full weight of Whitehall” behind the AI industry.
A key element of the plan is a move to a new “Scan > Pilot > Scale” approach to the adoption of AI across public services.
Clifford’s plan describes how this will make AI adoption in government less siloed and more large-scale.
“While there are instances of AI being used well across the public sector, often they are at small scale and in silos,” the action plan says. “Scaling these successes is essential, but will require us to think differently about procurement, especially if this activity is to support the domestic startup and innovation ecosystem.”
“As the digital centre of government, DSIT should support public sector partners where needed to 'move fast and learn things',” it adds.
DSIT has agreed to carry out 12 actions to bring about this new approach.
These include appointing of AI leads for each mission “to help identify where AI could be a solution”, building a cross-government “technical horizon scanning and market intelligence capability that understands AI capabilities”, and developing a framework for sourcing AI.
Some of the other commitments the government has made include:
- Creating a new function that will “draw on wider government functions to partner with AI companies”
- Committing to fund regulators to scale up their AI capabilities
- Publishing best-practice guidance, results, case studies and open-source solutions through a single “AI Knowledge Hub”
The government said it will continue to develop its policy response to the action plan as part of its work for the upcoming spring 2025 Spending Review.
And it said the AI Opportunities Unit in DSIT, which was announced in July, will regularly report to the technology secretary, Peter Kyle, on progress across government in delivering against the plan.