AI is at the forefront of the UK governments digital strategy, and believed to be crucial to the nation's future post-Brexit.
A recent study by Accenture estimated artificial intelligent systems could add up to a whopping and borderline unbelievable 654bn (US$802bn) to the British economy by 2035.
Well, you've gotta spend money to make money. So, Blighty's government has announced it is looking into fostering a thriving AI industry in the UK and pledged 17.3m ($21.2m) to bankroll machine learning and robotics research at universities. But is that enough?
The funding is better than nothing and shows the government is at least thinking about how important these technologies are, said Nick Taylor, professor of computer science and deputy director of the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics at Heriot-Watt University in Scotland. However, its not a great amount, he added.
This funding indicates that the government recognises how important AI and robotics are to our future," he said. "AI and robotics are advancing so rapidly at the current time that we could easily exhaust any amount of research funding that was directed towards them."
That 17 million quid will go to the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and filter down to several UK universities for a range of projects including developing robots for surgery and nuclear environments.
Of those funds, 6.5m ($8.0m) will be pumped into the UK Robotics and Autonomous Systems (UK-RAS) network. Its a small amount, considering robots are particularly expensive. Not only does it require expertise but costs of hardware need to be factored in as well.
Zoubin Ghahramani, professor of information engineering at the University of Cambridge, told The Register that AI is thriving in the UK, with academic institutions, startups and big companies from DeepMind and Amazon to Apple and Microsoft being major investors. Ghahramanis own upstart, Geometric Intelligence, which he cofounded along with Gary Marcus, Doug Bemis and Ken Stanley, was acquired by Uber for an undisclosed amount.
While he applauds the UK governments investment, he told us: Its a relatively small step in the right direction, compared to the hundreds of millions invested by Canadian and US governments.
DARPA, the US defense research arm, often readily dishes tens of millions of dollars for individual robot projects. In 2009, it awarded $32m (26.1m) to develop the LS3 robot, and a further $10m (8.1m) to test it.
The LS3 robot looks like a giant robo bull, complete with four sturdy legs and a barrel-like body. Its designed to help US soldiers carry 400 lbs (181.4 kg) of gear on their missions, but was shelved in 2015 for being too noisy and not stealthy enough to use in reality.
A cash injection of just under 20m into the UK is dwarfed by the $1.1bn (900m) spent by the US government on AI in 2015.
The UK funding is a token amount that couldnt hope to put us on the same level as Google or Microsoft, Kate Devlin, senior lecturer in the department of computing, and sex robots expert at Goldsmiths University, told The Register.
The only bright side I can see is that the government is recognising the importance of AI research in academia rightly so as that's often how big corporations acquire their technology and their expertise, she added.
Leslie Smith, professor of computer science at the University of Stirling, agrees. It's not much in comparison with the spend of large companies and the US [Defense department] on these areas," he said.
To me the question is more like: how can we get the best leverage for this sort of sum of money? How can we get companies to work with UK academics to make the most of this investment? Not unrelated to this is the issue of ensuring that the money generated from the application of these technologies sticks partly to the Universities, and partly to the UK itself rather than being exploited [elsewhere].
View post:
UK govt's 17.3m AI-boffinry cash injection is just 'a token amount' - The Register
- Classic reasoning systems like Loom and PowerLoom vs. more modern systems based on probalistic networks [Last Updated On: November 8th, 2009] [Originally Added On: November 8th, 2009]
- Using Amazon's cloud service for computationally expensive calculations [Last Updated On: November 8th, 2009] [Originally Added On: November 8th, 2009]
- Software environments for working on AI projects [Last Updated On: November 8th, 2009] [Originally Added On: November 8th, 2009]
- New version of my NLP toolkit [Last Updated On: November 8th, 2009] [Originally Added On: November 8th, 2009]
- Semantic Web: through the back door with HTML and CSS [Last Updated On: November 8th, 2009] [Originally Added On: November 8th, 2009]
- Java FastTag part of speech tagger is now released under the LGPL [Last Updated On: November 8th, 2009] [Originally Added On: November 8th, 2009]
- Defining AI and Knowledge Engineering [Last Updated On: November 8th, 2009] [Originally Added On: November 8th, 2009]
- Great Overview of Knowledge Representation [Last Updated On: November 8th, 2009] [Originally Added On: November 8th, 2009]
- Something like Google page rank for semantic web URIs [Last Updated On: November 8th, 2009] [Originally Added On: November 8th, 2009]
- My experiences writing AI software for vehicle control in games and virtual reality systems [Last Updated On: November 8th, 2009] [Originally Added On: November 8th, 2009]
- The URL for this blog has changed [Last Updated On: November 8th, 2009] [Originally Added On: November 8th, 2009]
- I have a new page on Knowledge Management [Last Updated On: November 8th, 2009] [Originally Added On: November 8th, 2009]
- N-GRAM analysis using Ruby [Last Updated On: November 8th, 2009] [Originally Added On: November 8th, 2009]
- Good video: Knowledge Representation and the Semantic Web [Last Updated On: November 8th, 2009] [Originally Added On: November 8th, 2009]
- Using the PowerLoom reasoning system with JRuby [Last Updated On: November 8th, 2009] [Originally Added On: November 8th, 2009]
- Machines Like Us [Last Updated On: November 8th, 2009] [Originally Added On: November 8th, 2009]
- RapidMiner machine learning, data mining, and visualization tool [Last Updated On: November 8th, 2009] [Originally Added On: November 8th, 2009]
- texai.org [Last Updated On: November 8th, 2009] [Originally Added On: November 8th, 2009]
- NLTK: The Natural Language Toolkit [Last Updated On: November 8th, 2009] [Originally Added On: November 8th, 2009]
- My OpenCalais Ruby client library [Last Updated On: November 8th, 2009] [Originally Added On: November 8th, 2009]
- Ruby API for accessing Freebase/Metaweb structured data [Last Updated On: November 8th, 2009] [Originally Added On: November 8th, 2009]
- Protégé OWL Ontology Editor [Last Updated On: November 8th, 2009] [Originally Added On: November 8th, 2009]
- New version of Numenta software is available [Last Updated On: November 8th, 2009] [Originally Added On: November 8th, 2009]
- Very nice: Elsevier IJCAI AI Journal articles now available for free as PDFs [Last Updated On: November 8th, 2009] [Originally Added On: November 8th, 2009]
- Verison 2.0 of OpenCyc is available [Last Updated On: November 8th, 2009] [Originally Added On: November 8th, 2009]
- What’s Your Biggest Question about Artificial Intelligence? [Article] [Last Updated On: November 8th, 2009] [Originally Added On: November 8th, 2009]
- Minimax Search [Knowledge] [Last Updated On: November 8th, 2009] [Originally Added On: November 8th, 2009]
- Decision Tree [Knowledge] [Last Updated On: November 8th, 2009] [Originally Added On: November 8th, 2009]
- More AI Content & Format Preference Poll [Article] [Last Updated On: November 8th, 2009] [Originally Added On: November 8th, 2009]
- New Planners Solve Rescue Missions [News] [Last Updated On: November 8th, 2009] [Originally Added On: November 8th, 2009]
- Neural Network Learns to Bluff at Poker [News] [Last Updated On: November 8th, 2009] [Originally Added On: November 8th, 2009]
- Pushing the Limits of Game AI Technology [News] [Last Updated On: November 8th, 2009] [Originally Added On: November 8th, 2009]
- Mining Data for the Netflix Prize [News] [Last Updated On: November 8th, 2009] [Originally Added On: November 8th, 2009]
- Interview with Peter Denning on the Principles of Computing [News] [Last Updated On: November 8th, 2009] [Originally Added On: November 8th, 2009]
- Decision Making for Medical Support [News] [Last Updated On: November 8th, 2009] [Originally Added On: November 8th, 2009]
- Neural Network Creates Music CD [News] [Last Updated On: November 8th, 2009] [Originally Added On: November 8th, 2009]
- jKilavuz - a guide in the polygon soup [News] [Last Updated On: November 8th, 2009] [Originally Added On: November 8th, 2009]
- Artificial General Intelligence: Now Is the Time [News] [Last Updated On: November 8th, 2009] [Originally Added On: November 8th, 2009]
- Apply AI 2007 Roundtable Report [News] [Last Updated On: November 8th, 2009] [Originally Added On: November 8th, 2009]
- What Would You do With 80 Cores? [News] [Last Updated On: November 8th, 2009] [Originally Added On: November 8th, 2009]
- Software Finds Learning Language Child's Play [News] [Last Updated On: November 8th, 2009] [Originally Added On: November 8th, 2009]
- Artificial Intelligence in Games [Article] [Last Updated On: November 8th, 2009] [Originally Added On: November 8th, 2009]
- Artificial Intelligence Resources [Last Updated On: November 8th, 2009] [Originally Added On: November 8th, 2009]
- Alan Turing: Mathematical Biologist? [Last Updated On: April 25th, 2012] [Originally Added On: April 25th, 2012]
- BBC Horizon: The Hunt for AI ( Artificial Intelligence ) - Video [Last Updated On: April 30th, 2012] [Originally Added On: April 30th, 2012]
- Can computers have true artificial intelligence" Masonic handshake" 3rd-April-2012 - Video [Last Updated On: April 30th, 2012] [Originally Added On: April 30th, 2012]
- Kevin B. Korb - Interview - Artificial Intelligence and the Singularity p3 - Video [Last Updated On: April 30th, 2012] [Originally Added On: April 30th, 2012]
- Artificial Intelligence - 6 Month Anniversary - Video [Last Updated On: April 30th, 2012] [Originally Added On: April 30th, 2012]
- Science Breakthroughs [Last Updated On: April 30th, 2012] [Originally Added On: April 30th, 2012]
- Hitman: Blood Money - Part 49 - Stupid Artificial Intelligence! - Video [Last Updated On: April 30th, 2012] [Originally Added On: April 30th, 2012]
- Research Members Turned Off By HAARP Artificial Intelligence - Video [Last Updated On: April 30th, 2012] [Originally Added On: April 30th, 2012]
- Artificial Intelligence Lecture No. 5 - Video [Last Updated On: April 30th, 2012] [Originally Added On: April 30th, 2012]
- The Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, 2012 - Video [Last Updated On: April 30th, 2012] [Originally Added On: April 30th, 2012]
- Charlie Rose - Artificial Intelligence - Video [Last Updated On: April 30th, 2012] [Originally Added On: April 30th, 2012]
- Expert on artificial intelligence to speak at EPIIC Nights dinner [Last Updated On: May 4th, 2012] [Originally Added On: May 4th, 2012]
- Filipino software engineers complete and best thousands on Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence Course [Last Updated On: May 4th, 2012] [Originally Added On: May 4th, 2012]
- Vodafone xone™ Hackathon Challenges Developers and Entrepreneurs to Build a New Generation of Artificial Intelligence ... [Last Updated On: May 4th, 2012] [Originally Added On: May 4th, 2012]
- Rocket Fuel Packages Up CPG Booster [Last Updated On: May 4th, 2012] [Originally Added On: May 4th, 2012]
- 2 Filipinos finishes among top in Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence course [Last Updated On: May 5th, 2012] [Originally Added On: May 5th, 2012]
- Why Your Brain Isn't A Computer [Last Updated On: May 5th, 2012] [Originally Added On: May 5th, 2012]
- 2 Pinoy software engineers complete Stanford's AI course [Last Updated On: May 7th, 2012] [Originally Added On: May 7th, 2012]
- Percipio Media, LLC Proudly Accepts Partnership With MIT's Prestigious Computer Science And Artificial Intelligence ... [Last Updated On: May 10th, 2012] [Originally Added On: May 10th, 2012]
- Google Driverless Car Ok'd by Nevada [Last Updated On: May 10th, 2012] [Originally Added On: May 10th, 2012]
- Moving Beyond the Marketing Funnel: Rocket Fuel and Forrester Research Announce Free Webinar [Last Updated On: May 10th, 2012] [Originally Added On: May 10th, 2012]
- Rocket Fuel Wins 2012 San Francisco Business Times Tech & Innovation Award [Last Updated On: May 13th, 2012] [Originally Added On: May 13th, 2012]
- Internet Week 2012: Rocket Fuel to Speak at OMMA RTB [Last Updated On: May 16th, 2012] [Originally Added On: May 16th, 2012]
- How to Get the Most Out of Your Facebook Ads -- Rocket Fuel's VP of Products, Eshwar Belani, to Lead MarketingProfs ... [Last Updated On: May 16th, 2012] [Originally Added On: May 16th, 2012]
- The Digital Disruptor To Banking Has Just Gone International [Last Updated On: May 16th, 2012] [Originally Added On: May 16th, 2012]
- Moving Beyond the Marketing Funnel: Rocket Fuel Announce Free Webinar Featuring an Independent Research Firm [Last Updated On: May 23rd, 2012] [Originally Added On: May 23rd, 2012]
- MASA Showcases Latest Version of MASA SWORD for Homeland Security Markets [Last Updated On: May 23rd, 2012] [Originally Added On: May 23rd, 2012]
- Bluesky Launches Drones for Aerial Surveying [Last Updated On: May 23rd, 2012] [Originally Added On: May 23rd, 2012]
- Artificial Intelligence: What happened to the hunt for thinking machines? [Last Updated On: May 25th, 2012] [Originally Added On: May 25th, 2012]
- Bubble Robots Move Using Lasers [VIDEO] [Last Updated On: May 25th, 2012] [Originally Added On: May 25th, 2012]
- UHV assistant professors receive $10,000 summer research grants [Last Updated On: May 27th, 2012] [Originally Added On: May 27th, 2012]
- Artificial intelligence: science fiction or simply science? [Last Updated On: May 28th, 2012] [Originally Added On: May 28th, 2012]
- Exetel taps artificial intelligence [Last Updated On: May 29th, 2012] [Originally Added On: May 29th, 2012]
- Software offers brain on the rain [Last Updated On: May 29th, 2012] [Originally Added On: May 29th, 2012]
- New Dean of Science has high hopes for his faculty [Last Updated On: May 30th, 2012] [Originally Added On: May 30th, 2012]
- Cognitive Code Announces "Silvia For Android" App [Last Updated On: May 31st, 2012] [Originally Added On: May 31st, 2012]
- A Rat is Smarter Than Google [Last Updated On: June 5th, 2012] [Originally Added On: June 5th, 2012]