The Productivity Institute wins award to research the challenges of rapid advances in artificial intelligence

The Productivity Institute, working with its partners the Bennett Institute for Public Policy and the Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence (ESCoE), has secured £650k in public funding to better understand how responsible AI can drive productivity and ensure the technologies are deployed responsibly across society and enhance the UK’s prosperity.

Researchers will explore how Responsible AI can drive productivity and economic growth, and conversely, how productivity and economic considerations can help develop and deploy artificial intelligence from both an ethical and legal standpoint.

They will start from the premise that the UK’s best opportunities for societal benefit, economic growth and commercial success depend on prioritising the trustworthy and responsible development and deployment of AI; and that current legal, regulatory, and economic incentives fail to structure innovation and commercialisation in a way that is likely to achieve this.

Project lead, Dame Professor Diane Coyle, Bennett Professor of Public Policy at the University of Cambridge said: “This is an opportunity for the UK to drive forward research globally at the intersection of technical and social science disciplines, particularly where there has been relatively little interdisciplinary research to date. We are keen to enhance connections between the research communities and businesses and policymakers.”

The project, Responsible & Trustworthy AI: Economic Landscape Analysis is funded by Responsible AI UK (RAI UK) as part of a series of breakthrough AI projects involving a number of research institutes to address the challenges of the rapid advances in artificial intelligence. This falls within a £31million programme that will run for four years. RAI UK is led from the University of Southampton and backed by UK Research and Innovation, through the UKRI Technology Missions Fund and EPSRC.