Science and Technology: Economy

Lord Drayson Excerpts

Thursday 31st October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Drayson (Lab)]

My Lords, I join noble Lords in thanking my noble friend Lord Stansgate for opening this debate in such style. I take this opportunity to pay tribute to the long-standing commitment and passion he has shown to science and the scientific community. It is a particular pleasure to follow a former colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Tarassenko, given his deep expertise in engineering and innovation and his skill as an academic entrepreneur, and to build on the argument that he made.

I will focus my contribution in this debate on artificial intelligence, given the accelerating impact that this technology is having on our society and economy. In doing so I draw the House’s attention to my registered interests, particularly regarding Appella and Arcturis—two companies engaged in the development and application of AI.

Over the past 38 years as a science entrepreneur, I have experienced first hand the challenges of creating wealth from UK science and technology. However, never have I witnessed the pace of change and the breadth of impact that I see now, as virtually every company, CEO and entrepreneur tries to understand and adopt AI technology, whatever sector they are in.

Unusually for a new technology, AI plays to the strengths of the large incumbent tech businesses and disadvantages the start-ups aiming to disrupt them. The key elements needed to develop and apply AI, such as access to large sets of training data and huge computing power, require massive capital investment. This puts the big US tech companies at a considerable advantage. Together with their ability to leverage their established customer bases to deploy AI via their existing product platforms, it presents a formidable barrier to competition. This has serious implications for the UK and for government policy.

How can we ensure that the value generated by the adoption of this transformative new technology, often based upon research undertaken here, fuels the UK economy? The answer is for the UK to adopt a proactive partnership strategy in AI with the United States and its leading technology companies. We know that many UK businesses are enticed to the US by access to its substantial market and large pool of capital. To ensure that AI businesses stay and grow here, we need to create joint UK-US initiatives that leverage our complementary strengths and enable those businesses to become transatlantic—for example, by establishing joint R&D grants; building on existing programmes to encourage US/UK talent exchange in AI; facilitating transatlantic university partnerships with common IP and data-sharing agreements; and building bilateral AI labs where we can work together to develop and scale the application of AI in health, defence and finance, sectors where the UK and the US have common interests and where the UK has deep expertise and competitive advantage.

As we look to regulate AI, let us align our policies with the US and attract American capital to fuel UK-based businesses and infrastructure by creating a common listing framework for the London Stock Exchange that is aligned with NASDAQ, rather than trying to sustain our own failing AIM. In summary, let us leverage our special relationship with America to ensure that British science remains at the forefront of AI research and is a major driver of a prosperous UK economy.