Britain Jumps On AI Bandwagon With $125M Taskforce For Education And Health Care

It looks like Britain is joining the ranks of Google and Microsoft to develop its own set of AI tools to tackle problems in two sectors notorious for slow adoption: education and health care.

The country is investing around $125 million (or 100 pounds) into developing foundational models similar to the language models ChatGPT is known for.

Just to help you understand how far (or not far) this money goes, ChatGPT rival Anthropic nabbed $124 million in Series A funding back in 2021, per Crunchbase data.

Compared to the literally billions of funding into AI since ChatGPT broke the tech industry in 2022, Britain’s humble allotment is a mere drop in the bucket.

But while Microsoft is using ChatGPT to bolster its search engine Bing and Google does the same with Google Bard, Britain’s investment “will build the UK’s ‘sovereign’ national capabilities so our public services can benefit from the transformational impact of this type of AI,” according to a press release.

The potential for AI in the public sector

Venture capitalists, startup founders and AI enthusiasts have long waxed poetic about the ways AI will dramatically change technology for the public good (though I’ve mostly seen it used to create marketing content and deepfakes of Trump and the Pope).

Health care, thanks to a pandemic-era push into embracing technology, is experimenting with AI already. Microsoft’s AI-powered notetaking tool can be used in hospitals to ease burnout for a small price of getting access to sensitive patient data. Another, Abridge, raised $12.5 million in 2022 for a similar tool.

This actually seems to be the most popular application for generative AI in health care, which is good, because I don’t want to hear anything about a Dr. ChatGPT (though it did recently pass a medical licensing exam).

Speaking of passing the medical licensing exam, students are using generative AI platforms to write essays and answer homework questions that have been able to subvert plagiarism tools. But just as the calculator forced math teachers to change how they taught equations, some education experts say there’s room to embrace generative AI in a way that forces students to ask critical questions.

“With AI set to contribute billions of pounds to UK GDP, the work of the taskforce will help deliver on the Prime Minister’s priorities to grow our economy, whilst generating better outcomes for people across the country through better public services,” the press release said.