The Research and Development Society is excited to announce a new programme focused on developing and understanding new frameworks in pursuit of a dynamic AI policy platform. Since 2023, significant attention has been given to the development of UK AI regulation, with a range of policy signals and initiatives emerging through different channels, although the promised UK AI Bill that might bind this into a clear policy statement, has yet to emerge. While these developments reflect the pace and complexity of a rapidly evolving field, greater coherence and clarity will become ever more critical as the policy landscape matures. As AI technologies become more embedded in UK society, we will need to balance diverse economic, social, and technological priorities. We need a structured, evidence-based discussion to help navigate the trade offs and align long term objectives. The RDS is therefore launching this programme as part of its “Big Tent Initiative”, bringing together stakeholders from industry, government, academia, and civil society to contribute to the development of new models and strategic interventions that can support sustainable national growth.
Forging the UK's AI Future, will endeavour to delve into the detail of UK policy around the development and deployment of artificial intelligence from multiple angles. The detailed frameworks we are developing can describe the broad technological and commercial challenges of these emerging technologies, as well as understand the narrow impacts affecting different market spaces. By leveraging our new frameworks and incorporating insights from the brightest minds working in the field, we will deliver a series of reports that outline a new national AI policy framework.
To build this framework, we are taking a multipronged approach with a series of online workshops focusing on the broad horizontal impacts of the AI product stack alongside a series of vertically focused workshops, each tackling specific market spaces. These will inform (and be informed by) an expert panel of individuals on the frontlines of AI technology development and deployment who will assess the UK's current and desired priorities for a policy platform using the RDS' Macro-Meso Framework. We will be regularly publishing the insights we gather from each event, leading to a final report to be shared with national and regional industry leaders and policy makers.
Across this programme we will be running four online workshops, each tackling different aspects of the AI challenge:
- The UK’s AI Frontier (Thursday 21st May):
Tackling the Horizontal impacts of AI technologies across all market spaces through the framing of the AI product stack, including issues of semiconductor production, energy and compute capacity and the regulation of new models and data - Shifting Healthcare with AI (Thursday 4th June):
Exploring the opportunities provided by the new hybrid technologies emerging within the Life Sciences sector, as well as the challenges created by the shift to preventative medicine and governing data usage - Balancing AI in Media (Wednesday 17th June):
Exploring the trade-offs that need to be made to allow AI innovations within media and entertainment to sit alongside protections for human driven creative industries, as well as the complex challenge of regulating the UK's national media ecosystem. - Optimising Energy Infrastructure (Wednesday 1st July):
Exploring how new AI technologies can enhance the production of energy from fossil fuels to renewables as well as refine the consumption of energy from households to major industry.