The UK government has announced its National Artificial Intelligence Strategy, designed to increase the use of artificial intelligence (“AI”) technologies, attract international investment in British AI companies and develop the next generation of homegrown technology talent.
The published document emphasises the aim of becoming a global leader with the principle of overtaking the USA and China by taking the goal of becoming a superpower in the field of AI one step further with the scaled AI initiatives, private investment capital and scientific outputs of the UK over a ten-year period. With this strategy, the plan to prioritise AI development and applications and to “go to the next level” is being addressed from a holistic perspective, building on past industrial and digital investments.
Turkey has recently joined the ranks of more than sixty countries that have published an AI strategy with the “National Artificial Intelligence Strategy 2021-2025”, the first national strategy document prepared in cooperation with the Presidency of the Republic of Turkey Digital Transformation Office and the Ministry of Industry and Technology.
Getting fruitful results from national strategy documents depends to a large extent on their adoption by society and their execution in co-operation with existing institutions. The UK’s AI Council, which was established in 2019 to strengthen coordination between the public, private sector and academia and to provide expert opinion and advice, recommended the creation of a national AI strategy in January 2021 by gathering its views under sixteen headings. Since 2014, the British government has invested more than £2.3 billion in the NHS AI Lab, autonomous vehicles, undergraduate and postgraduate research and initiatives, and with this strategy, it is seen that the recent public support in the recent past has been developed and preparations have been completed to take important steps to utilise the potential in the country over the next decade.
We can say that the strategies of training qualified experts and increasing employment, supporting innovation and R&D activities, supporting legal infrastructure and data security, which are also emphasised by Turkey, are in parallel with the UK’s perspective and goals.
To consolidate its position as a world leader in artificial intelligence, with ground-breaking pioneers such as Alan Turing and Ada Lovelace and a strong research track record, the UK has chosen three main development strands in its ten-year plan, underpinned by short, medium and long-term objectives: Investing and planning for the long-term development of the AI ecosystem, supporting the transition to an AI-enabled economy by enabling all regions and sectors to benefit from AI innovation, and ensuring the national and international management of AI technologies within the framework of core values.
As pointed out in Turkey’s national strategy document, with the growth in the field of AI on a global scale, the need for sectoral experience and domain knowledge in AI experts is rapidly increasing. While France and Germany have declared the importance of attracting researchers working in the field of AI to the region under EU cooperation and that they will create the conditions to make EU countries a centre of attraction, it is noteworthy that the UK, through its recently announced Innovation Strategy to attract post-Brexit talents to the country, will implement a new visa regime by expanding the ways in which talented AI researchers and entrepreneurs can work in the UK.
It is also stated that the contribution of AI investments will support the government’s target to increase the ratio of total public and private sector R&D expenditures to 2.4 per cent of GDP by 2027. The importance of cooperation between institutions and countries was emphasised and it was stated that participation in the European Union Horizon programmes will be ensured, strong and diverse international science and technology partnerships will be established to enable cooperation with other European researchers and to support R&D cooperation, and new initiatives will be supported through the Declaration on Cooperation in AI R&D with the USA.
With its National Data Strategy, the UK supports access to data, which is critical for the development and implementation of AI systems, by revealing the government’s approach to unlocking the power of data. Similarly, governments are implementing policies to improve data foundations in the private and third sectors, as can be seen in the example of the text and audio datasets and open source algorithm studies project that researchers and entrepreneurs can work on and develop their applications in the Turkish Open Source Platform.
The second main objective of the strategy document is to encourage the development and adoption of AI technologies within the scope of increasing economic return and supporting productivity. It is envisaged to support the product and service produced by innovative initiatives to reach potential markets and commercialisation. To ensure that all sectors and regions of the UK economy can benefit from the positive transformation that AI will bring, the government will support the local design and development of the next generation of AI systems and business adoption.
As in other fields, the necessity of commercialising the transformation of new technologies into products and services as well as developing new technologies in the field of AI has been emphasised. In this framework, it is recognised that with an effective IP protection system, AI researchers and developers need the right support to commercialise their outputs subject to IP and it is aimed to help them understand and identify their intellectual assets by providing them with the skills to protect, use and enforce their rights to increase potential opportunities.
In the document pointing out that AI applications have become widespread in the society, the contribution of AI applications to the fight against the pandemic with AI applications and big data processing in the work of the NSH during Covid-19 researches was pointed out. In line with the National Artificial Intelligence Strategy, a draft National Strategy for AI applications in health and social services has been launched.
The third and final main objective of the strategy document focuses on the importance of acting in global co-operation to promote the responsible development and efficient management of AI technologies. As pointed out in the document, the uncertainty of the risks and ambiguity of the impacts of AI technologies highlights the importance of reviewing existing regulations and alternative approaches to managing AI by national and international multi-stakeholder organisations and with the participation of academia, thought leaders and the business world. It is stated that the government’s attitude towards the potential risks and harms of AI technologies will be positioned with the report to be published in 2022. It is suggested that some regulatory provisions in force with alternative policies should be abolished considering their potential to hinder innovation, and that individual regulators should be able to work flexibly within their jurisdictions in order to obtain the right outputs in the field of AI by preserving the current sector-based approach. In this framework, in the development of the AI ecosystem, the publication of the AI assurance roadmap by the Data Ethics and Innovation Centre, the development of pioneering tools in the dissemination of AI standards, shaping the development of international norms with the principles of democracy and human rights, and supporting the continuous development of new capabilities around the reliability, acceptability, adaptability and transparency of AI technologies through the national AI Research and Innovation Programme.
Considering the published strategy documents and frameworks, it is obvious that the transformative role of AI in societies will continue. As we can see from the national artificial intelligence strategies of Turkey and the UK, it is critical for states to work in co-operation against the risks that new AI technologies may pose while accepting this transformation and to establish coordinated regulatory mechanisms for the development of an ecosystem on a global scale.
