The direction of AI innovation in the UK: Insights from a new database and a roadmap for reform

With the latest models achieving top scores in scientific and diagnostic reasoning tests, they could usher in a new era of growth. In our previous report we estimated that existing models, if widely implemented in the medium term, could help raise growth by 13 per cent. Advanced AI could also help tackle big societal challenges ranging from ill health to environmental degradation. 

But realising the benefits of AI requires more than just accelerating deployment. Policy needs to also provide strategic incentives for aligning AI deployment with the government’s missions. 

In this paper, we analyse the AI innovation landscape in the UK to determine which type of AI deployment is and is not currently taking place. We have built a first-of-its-kind database of 3,256 AI firms in the UK to identify ‘AI deployment gaps’, and make recommendations for how they can be filled.