UK Government invests £60 million into AI university labs

The UK Government has committed £60 million to two new AI university-based research labs.

This marks an increased commitment from the plan floated to fund one AI research lab with £40 million announced last March. In a press release, the Government has cited AI’s increasing importance in the energy and medical sectors and the UK’s potential leading role in AI innovation breakthroughs.

Based in Oxford University and University College London (UCL), these labs, backed by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), aim to deliver cutting-edge AI technologies to maximise performance and reduce costs for businesses.

In Oxford, the British Open Ended Learning and Discovery Lab (BOLD) will research how AI models obtain and adapt new information to maximise efficiency and alignment with human demand without relying on large amounts of centralised computing power.

BOLD is about a different route: discovering fundamentally new ways to build AI that are more efficient, more open and better aligned with human needs.

Professor Jakob Foerster, Oxford University Associate

In UCL, the Science of Fundamental AI Research (SOFAIR) lab will research creating open-source AI technology adapted for widely-available hardware, cutting costs and increasing accessibility.

Oxford University Associate Professor Jakob Foerster, who will lead the BOLD Lab, said: “The UK cannot win the global AI race simply by trying to outspend the largest technology companies on data and compute. BOLD is about a different route: discovering fundamentally new ways to build AI that are more efficient, more open and better aligned with human needs.”

Professor David Barber of UCL, who will head SOFAIR, added: “While current AI systems are impressive, many still suffer from basic issues such as inaccurate responses to questions. These systems often use similar underlying architectures, so SOFAIR will bring together the broader sciences and fresh ideas to create a new generation of open-source models.”

The six-year programme will see each lab dedicate £2 million to hire top AI talent, including at least 10 doctoral students, alongside access to tens of millions of pounds’ worth of large-scale compute.

Both labs will also cooperate with the Alan Turing Institute and the UKRI’s AI research hubs along with key industry stakeholders.

The investment is part of the wider UKRI’s AI Strategy to invest £1.6 billion over the next four years, to bolster the UK’s AI technological sovereignty and reduce reliance on overseas AI models.

Kanishka Narayan, Minister for AI and Online Safety, told Research Professional News: “These are bets on the next generation of frontier AI being built right here in the UK… British AI built with British values is the thing that we’re focused on.”