UK Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has announced a series of measures to support the development of artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing in the country. The initiatives include an “AI sandbox” that will provide support for AI companies, enabling them to trial new and faster approaches to bring products to market. The Chancellor has also pledged approximately £900 million of funding to implement the recommendations of the independent Future of Compute Review for an Exascale supercomputer, which is a measure of supercomputer performance.
To ensure the UK remains competitive in the fast-moving field of quantum computing, the Chancellor unveiled a £2.5 billion investment in quantum computing over 10 years. This investment will more than double the funding available to researchers in industry and universities under the existing National Quantum Technologies Programme, which aims to translate academic work into new products and services. Mr. Hunt believes that the power needed to run AI’s complex algorithms can also be provided by quantum computing.
Furthermore, the Chancellor has announced the Manchester Prize, a £1 million prize that will be awarded every year for the next decade for the most groundbreaking AI research in the UK. The prize is named after the University of Manchester’s invention of the first stored program computer in 1948.
