This shift has been particularly noticeable in artificial intelligence, a technology that promises to be as transformative as the internet, and we still assume we’re at the forefront of innovation.
Even if that were true, it is becoming less so. The latest developments in generative AI in the West, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, have almost all come from the United States.
The UK contributes only 1.3% of the total computing power of the world’s top 500 supercomputers, according to a Tony Blair Institute study, less than Finland and Italy, which recorded a decline in AI publications last year. was the only major country.
The UK is relatively good at fostering tech startups, but they rarely follow their courses and realize their potential. AI startup InstaDeep originally came to London from Tunisia and was recently acquired by Germany-based BioNTech in a £562m deal.
DeepMind, a British company that could reasonably claim to have laid the cornerstone of today’s AI breakthroughs, was also eventually sold to Google and is now absorbed into its parent company’s broader Silicon Valley AI research efforts. I’m here.
Despite a decline in foreign investment in the UK economy, foreign takeovers of UK companies have increased by more than 400% in aggregate since 2015, furthering the erosion of the UK’s sovereign AI capabilities. increase.
It’s a similar story about unrealized potential in the life sciences sector, where concerns about taxes and pricing are regularly cited by industry leaders as reasons to invest elsewhere.
The city has meanwhile struggled to maintain its position as Europe’s preeminent financial hub. The jobs lost on the continent have certainly been small since her Brexit, but the opportunity costs have been much higher. London has essentially become a branch rather than the originator of complex EU financial transactions as it once was.
