CGTN Europe interviewed Tim Flagg, Chief operating officer of UKAI
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00:00Well let's get more on this now with Tim Flagg who is Chief Operating Officer at UKAI, a trade
00:06body representing British AI businesses. Tim thank you very much for being with us on the programme
00:11today, you must be delighted. It's a really momentous day for the AI sector in the UK yes,
00:18I think seeing the bold and the ambitious plans which are outlined by the Prime Minister and Matt
00:22Clifford today it is exciting. Great and I just want to ask you about a point that Jen was just
00:28saying about regulation and Britain going its own way on regulation, what do you think that
00:32means and what is the industry hoping for on that front with regulation? Yeah so it's a really
00:39interesting time right now because the EU has obviously published the EU AI Act and that has
00:44been quite a rigid framework of regulation. The US on the opposite end had some regulation and
00:52that has now been or will be rescinded we think by Trump coming in so there's going to be a very
00:56much more laissez-faire approach to regulation in the US and UK is in the process of defining
01:03what will be in the AI bill so it's a unique opportunity to find a middle ground, that's
01:08a sort of sweet spot that Peter Kyle the Secretary of State was referring to a couple of days ago
01:13and it is a real opportunity for us to get this right. I think we will have alignment with a lot
01:19of the good stuff in the EU AI Act but we'll have the flexibility that businesses need to be able
01:24to innovate and not be hamstrung by too much rigid framework and on that point as well I think
01:32you know London can lead. London has got fantastic legal firms, deep experience in this field that
01:38could really make London the centre for AI regulation in the world. Well it certainly
01:45sounds very exciting, the numbers are very exciting, just how much AI could transform
01:49the British economy. The Institute for Public Policy Research think tank saying that AI could
01:54lead to economic gains worth up to something like 300 billion dollars a year annually.
01:59How realistic is that? How can that be measured and how much is it going to cost? This is very
02:04energy hungry technology isn't it? Yeah I think there's two really interesting questions in that.
02:10The first is, is it realistic? And actually we've published a report which looks at the impact on
02:17GDP that the AI sector can have and actually over the next five years we've calculated that it could
02:23contribute up to one trillion extra in GDP by 2030. So you know that's it's a significant
02:29amount but to your question about how are we going to do that and how that's going to come,
02:34well I think today has been a really important step to really give the, for the government to
02:40give their commitment and to set out this plan and a very clear direction of travel. There's
02:44no mistake about the direction they want to go in and it gives business and investors more
02:49importantly the confidence to invest in the UK. And then on that sort of second question you had
02:54then about you know the energy, how are we actually going to be able to afford to create the energy?
03:00Energy is one of the or could be one of the limiting factors here. So I think that's a really
03:05interesting angle and we're putting out a report later this week that actually looks at the cost
03:09of energy. It's skyrocketed in the UK versus other countries and you know whilst that's good from an
03:16environmental perspective because it's paying for all the renewables which are being brought online,
03:20it actually could be very restrictive for the growth of the AI sector as that grows. So
03:25we need AI to find solutions, so algorithmically being able to make the data centres much more
03:32energy inefficient. We need to use that heat that's generated for secondary purposes as well.
03:37There are solutions but yeah I think that is something that has to be addressed very quickly.
03:41Okay Tim well I'm afraid we're out of time but fascinating stuff, great to get your input today
03:45on this news. Tim Flagg, Chief Operating Officer at UKAI, many thanks.