Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to encourage the growth of research in artificial intelligence technologies, particularly regarding funding for PhDs to develop these technologies.

The Government accepted the recommendations in the AI Opportunities Action Plan on skills, including working with universities to increase provision of AI courses, expanding educational pathways into AI, ensuring our lifelong skills programme is ready for AI and establishing a new prestigious AI talent scholarship to bring the brightest to the UK’s universities.

The Government actively supports AI research through research programmes, infrastructure investments, and skills and talent initiatives. The UK’s publicly funded portfolio of AI R&D investments is worth £1 billion, including investments in centres for doctoral training, the Alan Turing Institute, Bridge AI, Responsible AI UK, and the AI hubs.

UKRI has invested in two tranches of AI centres for doctoral training (£100M in 2018 and £117M in 2023) which will train a total of around 2000 AI PhDs, with around 200 graduates per year.