£370m plan launched to turn UK into ‘tech superpower’

A pile of Sterling notes.

The Prime Minister and Technology Secretary have unveiled the Government’s plan to cement the UK’s place as a science and technology superpower by 2030, alongside a raft of new measures backed by over £370 million to boost investment in innovation, bring the world’s best talent to the UK, and seize the potential of ground-breaking new technologies like AI.

The new Science and Technology Framework is the first major piece of work from the newly created Department...

6 March 2023 | Artificial Intelligence

AI being used to cherry-pick organs for transplant

A new method to assess the quality of organs for donation is set to revolutionise the transplant system - and it could help save lives and tens of millions of pounds.

The National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) is contributing more than £1 million in funding to develop the new technology, which is known as Organ Quality Assessment (OrQA). It works in the same way as Artificial Intelligence-based facial recognition to evaluate the quality of an organ.

It...

2 March 2023 | Artificial Intelligence

Informatica launches AI tool for marketers 

Working talking next to a laptop.

Informatica, an enterprise cloud data management specialist, has launched the industry's only free cloud data loading, integration and ETL/ELT service - Informatica Cloud Data Integration-Free and PayGo.

The new offering targets data practitioners and non-technical users such as in marketing, sales, and revenue operations teams to build data pipelines within minutes. For example, it provides operations teams with a fast, free, and frictionless way to load, integrate and...

1 March 2023 | Artificial Intelligence

GitHub CEO: The EU ‘will define how the world regulates AI’

GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke addressed the EU Open Source Policy Summit in Brussels and gave his views on the bloc’s upcoming AI Act. 

“The AI Act will define how the world regulates AI and we need to get it right, for developers and the open-source community,” said Dohmke.

Dohmke was born and grew up in Germany but now lives in the US. As such, he is all too aware of the widespread belief that the EU cannot lead when it comes to tech innovation.

“As a...

6 February 2023 | Applications

Artificial Intelligence: Making Retail POS Systems Smarter

The retail sector is no longer a haven for old technologies, where customers refuse to abandon their favorite brands. Every business in a competitive retail ecosystem is struggling to keep customers engaged and delighted and convert every potential opportunity into sales.Technology has been an important facilitator for the retail sector for years, and with the influx of technological breakthroughs such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), the retail environment is experiencing significant...

1 February 2023 | Artificial Intelligence

Microsoft releases Azure OpenAI Service and will add ChatGPT ‘soon’

Microsoft has announced the general availability of the Azure OpenAI Service and plans to add ChatGPT in the near future.

Currently, Azure OpenAI Service provides access to some of the most powerful AI models in the world—including Codex and DALL-E 2.

A “fine-tuned” version of GPT-3.5 will also be available through Azure OpenAI Service soon.

https://twitter.com/OpenAI/status/1615160228366147585

Azure OpenAI Service was unveiled in November 2021....

17 January 2023 | Applications

Bill Gates calls AI ‘quite revolutionary’ – but is less sure about the metaverse

Bill Gates has given his verdict on some of tech’s biggest buzzwords – and proffered that while the metaverse is lukewarm, AI is ‘quite revolutionary.’ 

The Microsoft co-founder was participating in his annual Reddit Ask Me Anything (AMA) session and was asked about major technology shifts. AI, Gates noted, was in his opinion ‘the big one.’ 

“I don’t think Web3 was that big or that metaverse stuff alone was revolutionary, but AI is quite...

13 January 2023 | Artificial Intelligence

AI project imagines what deceased celebs would look like today

A project called ‘As If Nothing Happened’ uses AI to imagine what celebrities who met their untimely demise would look like today.

Artists are increasingly using AI-powered tools for their creative projects. Alper Yesiltas, an Istanbul-based artist, has posted numerous images of celebrities that have been aged convincingly using AI.

One of his collections is called ‘Young Age(d)’ and uses AI to age well-known (and very much still alive) figures such as Greta...

12 December 2022 | Applications

State of AI 2022: Adoption plateaus but leaders increase gap

According to McKinsey’s latest State of AI report, leaders are pulling ahead but overall adoption is plateauing.

McKinsey notes that organisations that report using AI in at least one business area have more than doubled since 2017.

The most significant jump in adoption was between 2017 (20%) and 2018 (47%). A peak was reached in 2019 (58%) but has since tailed off to 50% in 2022.

Considering the plateau includes the pandemic years – when businesses were...

7 December 2022 | Applications

UK creates £1.5M fund to support carbon-reducing AI projects

The UK Government has launched a £1.5 million programme to support the use of AI to reduce carbon emissions.

“The UK is one of the world’s most advanced AI economies, and AI technology is already having a transformative impact on our economy and society,” said UK Science Minister George Freeman.

“But there is tremendous potential to do more.”

The AI for Decarbonisation programme is part of the wider £1 billion Net Zero Innovation Portfolio that aims...

22 November 2022 | Applications