UK announces Meta-backed AI team to upgrade public services

LONDON, Jan 27 (Reuters) - ⁠The British government ⁠said ‍on Tuesday it had recruited a team of artificial intelligence specialists to build AI tools ‍to improve transport, public safety and defence, using ​funding from Meta.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer, like many other leaders around ​the world, is looking to tap into the huge economic potential of developing an AI industry and, at the same time, use ​the technology to improve productivity across government.

The government said the AI experts would spend the next year ​developing open-source tools to improve how authorities maintain roads and transport networks, manage ‌public safety, and make decisions on national security.

The body includes a data scientist from the ​Alan Turing Institute and university ⁠researchers whose expertise spans computer vision, applied machine learning for the public sector, robotics-driven imaging ‌and the design of trustworthy, safety-critical AI systems.

The programme will focus on developing technology that public bodies can run without ‌relying on commercial, closed-source systems, it added.

Meta, which announced funding the ‌project in July last year, said at the time the experts would be using open-source models like Meta's artificial intelligence system, ‍Llama - a large language model capable of processing data including text, video, images and audio.

It ⁠also said tools built with these models would be owned by the government, allowing departments to keep sensitive data in-house and adapt the technology as needed.

(Reporting by Sam Tabahriti; editing by William James)

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