UK's new 10-year "National AI Strategy," released today

jared_m

UK's new 10-year "National AI Strategy," released today

jared_m

1 min readSep 22, 2021

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Stefan_Schubert

Summary of key actions:

Some other relevant quotes:

While the emergence of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) may seem like a science fiction concept, concern about AI safety and nonhuman-aligned systems is by no means restricted to the fringes of the field. The government’s first focus is on the economic and social outcomes of autonomous and adaptive systems that exist today. However, we take the firm stance that it is critical to watch the evolution of the technology, to take seriously the possibility of AGI and ‘more general AI’, and to actively direct the technology in a peaceful, human-aligned direction.

The government takes the long term risk of non-aligned Artificial General Intelligence, and the unforeseeable changes that it would mean for the UK and the world, seriously.

axioman

More detailed action points on safety from page 32:

The Office for AI will coordinate cross-government processes to accurately assess long term AI safety and risks, which will include activities such as evaluating technical expertise in government and the value of research infrastructure. Given the speed at which AI developments are impacting our world, it is also critical that the government takes a more precise and timely approach to monitoring progress on AI, and the government will work to do so.

The government will support the safe and ethical development of these technologies as well as using powers through the National Security & Investment Act to mitigate risks arising from a small number of potentially concerning actors. At a strategic level, the National Resilience Strategy will review our approach to emerging technologies; the Ministry of Defence will set out the details of the approaches by which Defence AI is developed and used; the National AI R&I Programme’s emphasis on AI theory will support safety; and central government will work with the national security apparatus to consider narrow and more general AI as a top-level security issue.

EdoArad🔸

It's great that they explicitly mention A(G)I Safety and Catastrophic Risks as a part of their agenda

D_M_x

Wow. I am still reading through this, but I am impressed with the quality input the UK government has clearly received and how well they wrote up their considerations and conclusions. Maybe this is normal for the reference class for UK gov strategy documents (if so I was unaware), but it is not something I was expecting.

JP Addison🔸

[Meta commentary] Damn they have options to view in html, pdf, and mobile-optimized pdf. Holy crap. Why is the UK government so good at technology?

axioman

Huh? I did not like the double-page style for the non-mobile pdf, as it required some manual rescaling on my PC.

And the mobile version has the main table cut between two pages in a pretty horrible way. I think I would have much preferred a single pdf in the mobile/single page style that is actually optimized for that style, rather than this.

Maybe I should have used the HTML version instead?

JP Addison🔸

I admittedly used the html version.

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