Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what criteria the Government used when deciding the six priority areas for the Office of Artificial Intelligence.

A number of factors were considered in identifying initial areas for the Office of Artificial Intelligence including importance to the UK economy, apparent readiness to benefit from artificial intelligence, and where we consider government involvement supporting take-up of AI can help drive benefits for industry or consumers. AI is already transforming business models across many sectors of the UK economy and Government collaboration with academia and industry to encourage realisation of the benefits of AI will not be limited to the 6 initial priority sectors.

Once established, the Office for AI will take forward some of the recommendations of the recently published review – “Growing the artificial intelligence industry in the UK”, published in October 2017 – through the AI Sector Deal, which we hope to publish early in 2018.