Oxford and UCL to lead £60-million AI push to reduce reliance on US tech
Key Points
- Oxford and UCL to lead two new government-backed AI labs
- Up to £60m in UKRI funding over six years
- Funding doubled from £40m and one lab to £60m and two
- £2m per lab to hire at least 10 doctoral students each
- Part of £1.6bn UKRI AI Strategy running over four years
Two new research labs led by Oxford and University College London will share up to £60 million in government funding to develop the next generation of AI in Britain, the government announced on Tuesday (23 June).
The labs are backed through UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and will be tasked with building AI systems that are cheaper to run, more dependable and easier for businesses and public services to adopt.
The funding aims to reduce British dependence on the small number of model providers that currently dominate the field, with the work focused on open-source technologies that could run on widely available hardware, including ordinary consumer computers.
AI Minister Kanishka Narayan said Britain was positioned to shape the next phase of the technology.
“We are only just beginning to unlock AI’s huge potential to grow our economy and improve our public services. With our world-leading universities and deep pool of AI expertise, Britain can set the agenda for what comes next,” he said.
Narayan added that building the capability domestically was “reducing reliance on others and securing Britain’s place at the forefront of this technology”, noting the announcement coincided with what would have been Alan Turing’s 114th birthday.
The Science of Fundamental AI Research (SOFAIR) Lab, led by Professor David Barber at UCL, will develop open-source AI technologies designed to run on widely available hardware.
The lab will work alongside the universities of Cambridge, Oxford and Edinburgh, drawing on researchers across computer science, mathematics, statistics and neuroscience.
Barber said current systems remained flawed despite their capabilities.
“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,” he said.
He added that the work would “reduce dependency on the small number of model providers, boosting UK sovereignty”.
The British Open-ended Learning and Discovery (BOLD) Lab, led by Professor Jakob Foerster at the University of Oxford with UCL and Imperial College London, will examine how AI systems learn, adapt and navigate physical spaces.
Foerster said Britain could not compete by matching the spending of the largest technology companies.
“The UK cannot win the global AI race simply by trying to outspend the largest technology companies on data and compute,” he said, describing the project as “a different route” focused on more efficient and open methods.
Both labs will invest in researchers at every career stage, with £2 million per lab earmarked for hiring at least 10 doctoral students.
They will also work with the Alan Turing Institute and UKRI’s existing AI research hubs.
