Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what steps she is taking to support (a) responsible research and development into and (b) the use of ethical practices on artificial intelligence by industry.

The Government is taking a number of steps to support responsible research and promote ethical practices in the AI industry. The AI Regulation White Paper sets out 5 cross-sector principles which will guide and inform the responsible development of AI. In addition, this Government has allocated £2 million for the development of regulatory sandboxes for businesses to make it easier for them to navigate the regulatory landscape so they can bring innovative products to market whilst doing so in line with our principles

We will also continue to take a leading role in global standards development organisations, such as the ISO and IEC, to develop global AI technical standards that uphold our democratic values. In this context, the AI Standards Hub led by The Alan Turing Institute, in collaboration with the British Standards Institution and the National Physical Laboratory, and supported by the UK Government, will aim to grow the UK’s multi-stakeholder contribution to the development of global AI technical standards.

£8.5 million funding has been made available via the Arts and Humanities Research Council in June 2022 June for ‘Enabling a Responsible AI Ecosystem’, the first major academic research programme on AI ethics and regulation of this scale. This is complemented by the £117 million investment secured this year for new UKRI Centres for Doctoral Training – on top of £100 million for existing Centres funded in 2019 – which include ethics and social responsibility courses for the PhD candidates they train.

Announced in April this year, the Government is also establishing a Foundation Model Taskforce with £100 million start-up funding to ensure sovereign capabilities and broad adoption of safe and reliable foundation models. The Taskforce will focus on opportunities to establish the UK as a world leader in foundation models and their applications across the economy, and acting as a global standard bearer for AI safety.

Finally, Crown Commercial Service’s AI Marketplace dynamic purchase system for public sector procurement of AI, which operationalised the recommendations of the Office for AI’s procurement guidelines, has a baseline ethics standard for suppliers into government.