Artificial Intelligence Opportunities Action Plan

Debate between Lord McNicol of West Kilbride and Lord Vallance of Balham

Thursday 16th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord very much. I will not add to his comments about the 14 years of endless initiatives, but it is crucial that when we do something such as this, we do it properly. Obviously, my experience was in setting up the Vaccine Taskforce to do just that, and this is the same sort of problem. We have to get everybody across government working on this; there is a big delivery task. Delivery should be our focus and we should keep holding ourselves to account for timelines and deliverables.

[Lord McNicol of West Kilbride (Lab)]

My Lords, Monday’s Statement on the AI Opportunities Action Plan highlighted the Government’s ambitious vision on AI adoption across the UK, and I welcome it. While the plan outlines significant investment and initiatives to boost AI infrastructure and capabilities, there are concerns about how SMEs will fare in this rapidly evolving landscape, which is largely dominated by the big tech companies. Recent data shows that only 25% of SMEs are currently using AI, despite 42% of them wishing to use it to increase their productivity. However, these small companies often lack the resources and the expertise to fully benefit from AI adoption. What specific measures will be implemented to protect SMEs from being squeezed out by the larger AI companies, and how will the Government facilitate meaningful collaborations between SMEs and the AI giants to foster the innovations and maintain a diverse, competitive AI infrastructure?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend. There are two different aspects to his SME question—the SME use of AI, and the AI SMEs—and both are dealt with in the report, I think. Many of the recommendations indicate what would be done, but I will outline some of the points on SMEs for AI. There is an important join-up task to be undertaken, which is part of what this plan does: the things we fund at the beginning of the process, such as grants from Innovate UK to get companies off the ground, to supporting that funding through BBB and beyond, linking to regulation to make it as simple as we can to enable innovation, and linking in turn to procurement to ensure that there are procurement signals to allow these companies to get the investment to grow and to scale into the companies they could be.

On the adoption side, there is a specific group working on adoption of AI technologies across the UK and a report is due out by the Government Chief Scientific Adviser and the National Technology Adviser on adoption of technologies more broadly, which is about ensuring that we get uptake of new technologies in companies. We know that we have a long tail of companies that do not do that in the UK, and it will be an important part of making sure that the entire economy benefits.