The fatal flaw in Starmer’s AI plan to save Britain

You’d be forgiven for thinking the government’s new AI Opportunities Action Plan lacks ambition. While frontier AI businesses in the US and China are developing dazzlingly powerful AI tools to cure diseases and solve mind-bending equations in physics, Sir Keir Starmer today promised that artificial intelligence would ‘spot potholes more quickly’.

Leaving this Starmerism aside, there is lots of detail in the plan to get tech companies excited. The creation of so-called ‘AI growth zones’ to build tech infrastructure faster and attract clusters of AI expertise in targeted locations brings huge promise. The history of technological advances, from social media to semiconductors, is often a story of bright, like-minded individuals firing off ideas in close proximity.

The creation of a new national data library to support AI development is also welcome; while a new dedicated AI energy council shows a degree of seriousness in the making this work happen.