This month has seen the launch of the UK Government's ambitious AI Opportunities Action Plan with the aim "to shape the AI revolution rather than wait to see how it shapes us," and position the nation as a world leader in the technology by implementing its 50 recommendations for AI growth and innovation. Commenting on the announcement, Alison Kay, Vice President, UK and Ireland at Amazon Web Services (AWS), said that the plan "will play an important role in helping the UK to unlock the full potential of AI, and in doing so, boost productivity, enhance economic growth, and improve public services. At AWS, we've seen first-hand the benefits that digital technologies like AI can bring, and that's why we've announced plans to invest £8 billion over the next five years building, operating, and maintaining data centres in the UK."

However Dr. Kjell Carlsson, Head of AI strategy at Domino Data Lab, cautions that, while the UK has a head start over many countries thanks to its "AI talent, academic institutions and vibrant community of AI startups" we could be found lacking in other areas. "Britain cannot and should not try to compete in the global arms race for AI infrastructure," according to Dr. Kjell. "The economics heavily favour the U.S., China, and even other European nations with cheaper factors such as electricity, land and labour. Instead, the UK can capitalise on today’s hybrid cloud environment, which allows researchers and enterprises to access secure, cost-effective compute resources globally."

Concerns have also been raised from outside the tech industry, with the newly-formed Creative Rights in AI Coalition urging the Government to respect copyright laws in the push to unlock data assets in the public and private sector. "Data that isn't in the training sets of current models and encodes new insights about the world is particularly valuable," according to the Action Plan. "Public data sets, including scientific data sets, may be extremely important in this context." But the Coalition points out that "just as tech firms are content to pay for the huge quantity of electricity that powers their data centres, they must be content to pay for the high-quality copyright-protected works which are essential to train and ground accurate (GEN AI) models." Time will tell if they're willing to pay the price.

Finally this month we're pleased to announce that nominations to determine the finalists of the 2025 Network Computing Award are now open, so please visit Network Computing Awards to cast yours!

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