The UK’s artificial Intelligence sector is witnessing exponential growth and is said to be growing faster than competing countries such as America, Australia, and Canada.
And, it’s British start-ups that have been spearheading this growth to the point that the world is looking up to them for their expertise.
Machine Learning, an integral part of AI, is already running our digital lives, whether it’s auto-tagging photos or voice recognition technology used by Siri. And, once the computers are independent enough to make intelligent decisions, opportunities will be endless. In the near future, we will be seeing technologists training computers on medical issues, running factories, driving cars and more.
While the Brits haven’t so far bragged loudly about their competence in this complicated space, the country knows that its growing repertoire in AI hasn’t gone undiscovered and unrecognized.
Recruiting and hiring qualified members takes too much time that, now, companies are looking to develop data science teams, in-house. As long as employees have the building blocks to do data work, they can easily find a position in any major corporation.
In fact, tech giants such as Apple, Microsoft, Twitter, and Amazon have all been acquiring British Artificial Intelligence companies for new innovations.
For instance, Magic Pony, a video processing start-up, has become central to Twitter’s future success, enhancing its live-video capabilities.
In 2014, Google acquired a London based startup DeepMind for $400m. During that time, DeepMind didn’t even have a product to its name though it had got a paper published for presentation purposes at NIPS – a machine-learning conference – that centered on its new system that learned to play and wins seven Atari 2600 video games without knowing the rules.
Today, DeepMind is looked upon as a leading name in AI research, globally, with 250 researchers working under its banner, according to London app developers.
UK to spend Millions on AI
UK’s Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Greg Clark, had recently expressed his thoughts on AI saying that UK may have to proactively work toward retaining its position as the world-leader in AI, by growing it’s AI capability and deploying it widely.
He further added: “We are at the cusp of one of the most exciting times in our lives and, if we get our strategy for AI right, then the UK will be able to reap the rewards for our economy for decades to come.”
The UK government will be investing almost $1 billion in AI. The minister further stated that more and more techies want to come to Britain for AI. So, though Britain is operating from the position of strength, it has to build on its AI software technology if it wants to dominate the sector in the coming years.
UK Exceptional Talent Visas to Attract More AI Talent
Because of Brexit tech companies may face talent crunch. This is where Clark plans to double the number of exceptional talent visas. The new visas are expected to attract AI researchers, and even revise immigration rules for the exceptionally talented, helping them to apply for settlement after three years and even enabling skilled students to work in the UK after finishing their degrees.
UK AI startups have been focusing on diverse areas such as personal finance, education and autonomous vehicles. Quantum Black, a British machine learning and AI company with 350 technology experts are helping clients in the corporate, government and third sectors to better their performance.
Author Bio: This is Jennifer Warren, a Content Crafter for GoodFirms – a review and research platform for mobile app development, web development companies and more. The company publishes a research report on a time to time basis, the latest one is on PPC Management Research.