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Artificial Intelligence Projects to Keep UK at Forefront of Transformative Technologies

The Turing AI Fellowships initiative, a collaboration between the UK Government and the Alan Turing Institute, has just announced who the recipients of its second wave of Turing AI Acceleration Fellowships will be.

Financial grants will go to 15 Artificial Intelligence-focused innovators, located across the country,[1] from Southampton to Glasgow.[2] The awards follow the first round of fellowships, which were announced in October 2019 and which totalled five.

The resources have been allocated in order to support the country’s status as a leader in groundbreaking Artificial Intelligence (AI) and to help accelerate programmes of innovation in this field of engineering, to drive workplace productivity.

The total sum allocated to the 15 projects is £20m. Projects vary greatly but all have the common denominator – being driven by AI innovation and innovative approaches.

One groundbreaking project which is to benefit, will use AI for the purposes of early-stage cancer detection. Another will examine data processing, delivering new energy efficiencies.

This Turing fellowship scheme is being managed by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), in partnership with the Alan Turing Institute and the Office for Artificial Intelligence.  The collaboration between academia and industry is viewed as an important means of accelerating “transformative technologies” and building on Britain’s impressive past in the field of AI, which includes Alan Turing’s achievements.  The aim is to nurture innovators, described as the “next generation of Alan Turings”, by Science Minister, Amanda Solloway.

The great leap forward that AI represents will transform many engineering, manufacturing and medical workplaces, to mention just a few sectors in which its impacts could be hugely beneficial to productivity and progress.  Introducing such technologies will create new insurance risks and requirements and those managing sites that are the beneficiaries of such digital transformation will need to re-examine their insurance requirements in new ways.

Insurers will be monitoring the landscape around AI and creating appropriate insurance solutions that cater for the new risks, which are underwritten according to the levels of cover required by those in these dynamic AI-driven environments.

Whilst transformation is likely to gather pace fast, for now, the insurance requirements of many engineering and manufacturing businesses will remain traditional ones.  The need to have engineering inspections will remain and firms will have to assure their insurers that equipment has been maintained appropriately and regularly and that no defects will cause unanticipated incidents.

Firms will still have a duty of care over their employees and the public, whatever their degree of technological advancement, and risks such as legionella in water systems, and the new risks associated with Covid-19 will continue to be the ones that matter, for some time to come.

If you require assistance with the mandatory insurances that the law expects you to have in place, or the specific engineering and manufacturing insurance covers that will protect your business and its assets, we have expert brokers in your field, who can assist you.  If you also recognise the growing risk of cyber attacks, of course, we can help with that too.  Please just get in touch.

Sources:[1] https://www.uktech.news/news/20m-boost-from-government-including-ai-that-detects-cancer-in-early-stage-20201127[2] https://www.ukri.org/news/new-turing-ai-fellows-to-deliver-world-class-ai-research/