UK Deputy PM at Imperial for AI speech

Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden visited Imperial last Friday to deliver a major speech on AI, announcing plans to spend £110m in order to deploy AI in the public sector.

“Imperial has the combined power of over 1,000 researchers across all our faculties and disciplines working to accelerate the safe and productive development and deployment of AI," said College President Hugh Brady.

Imperial is positioning itself as a leader in AI, and has announced a series of AIrelated initiatives over the past year.

In early February, the university announced that it would co-lead the UK’s flagship £12m AI for Chemistry Hub. The hub aims to bring together researchers working at the interface of AI and chemistry.

On the first day of last year’s AI Safety Summit – the first ever global summit on AI – Imperial released a statement calling on the government to draw on the College’s technical expertise and make the country ‘a global AI leader’.

And in October, Science Secretary Michelle Donelan came to the South Kensington campus to announce 12 new UKRI AI Centres for Doctoral Training – one of which will be based at Imperial. The College has been given £28 million to host its AI centre, which will train PhD researchers to develop AI systems addressing healthcare challenges.