AI, cybersecurity, and quantum computing shape UK’s new 10-year economic plan

Artificial intelligence, quantum computing and cybersecurity are “frontier technologies” the UK government plans to prioritize as part of its blueprint to overhaul the nation’s economy and industries over the next decade.

That’s according to its long-awaited industrial strategy policy paper and a separate plan going into more detail on digital and other technologies.

It would perhaps have been bigger news if the government hadn’t put AI, cybersecurity and quantum computing at the heart of its plans, given that it has already trailed this heavily in a sequence of reports, including January’s AI Opportunities Action Plan.

But the hope for the tech sector expressed in the paper, titled The UK’s Modern Industrial Strategy, is still ambitious, including that by 2035 the UK should aim to be one of the world’s top three R&D superpowers and home to a tech business worth a trillion dollars.

All that has to happen in a mere decade in a country unaccustomed to talking about its future more than one four-year election cycle ahead. It’s also interventionist in tone, an idea at odds with half a century of thinking in Britain which assumed technology should be left to its own devices.

AI and quantum computing will build the companies of the future. However, because this infrastructure will be vulnerable to disruption, it will need cybersecurity innovation to ensure its operation.

“We will enable new sectors to establish themselves e.g., our rapidly growing AI sector. […] Driving investment into our internationally renowned cybersecurity sector and supporting cutting-edge innovation to address the challenges that prevent widespread technology adoption,” the government wrote in the the Digital Technologies Sector Plan.

With a combined value of £1 trillion ($1.4 trillion) the UK’s tech sector was currently the world’s third most valuable behind only the US and China, it calculated.

The Plan’s focus on AI in particular sets out ambitious uptake goals. As soon as 2030, the UK should have several AI growth zones, with 7.5 million people upskilled to use the technology while the country’s AI research capacity will grow twentyfold, the plan projects. By the same date, the CyberASAP accelerator program should be supporting 250 cybersecurity companies and 28 spinouts.

Big interventions

Some optimism is probably justified — the country is home to a good collection of AI expertise for example — but it wouldn’t be Britain if there weren’t doubts.

The first is that while the UK has a reasonable track record at creating AI, cybersecurity, and technology companies, its record of keeping them British is less positive. Two examples are Google getting its hands on AI specialist DeepMind at a bargain-basement price in 2014, and Softbank’s purchase of chip designer Arm two years later. Both are still based in the UK, but with their profits flowing elsewhere.

That’s not always an issue but, without a core of sovereign businesses, it’s debatable whether a country is really in charge of its technology ecosystem in the long run.

A second issue is the size of the government interventions necessary to fuel local technology businesses today from startup to unicorn and beyond. In a sector that thinks in the hundreds of billions, the UK Government’s budget, doled out in tens of millions in a variety of programs, remains more constrained.

There’s also doubt about whether the rest of the UK economy will be able to profit from AI developments.

“According to Cisco’s latest UK AI Readiness Index, only 10% of UK organisations are fully prepared to harness AI’s potential,” said Cico’s UK and Ireland chief executive, Sarah Walker.

Cisco collaborated with the development of the Government’s plan, but Walker pointed out that its success still depended on overcoming deeper workforce challenges:

“AI adoption and implementation is primarily a people challenge. From traditional IT roles to marketing and supply chain management, almost every job will require AI literacy in the very near future,” she said.

In some parts of the UK, this would be easier than in others. “We need to ensure up-skilling is addressed with equality, to avoid exacerbating economic gaps that already exist across demographics and regions.”