Tony Blair, TBI Executive Chairman and William Hague, former Conservative Party leader and Foreign Secretary have co-authored report ‘A New National Purpose: The UK’s Opportunity to Lead on Next Wave Robotics’, which sets out how the UK can catch up to other G7 countries.
They set out recommendations for a robotics strategy, including increasing investment through a £100m Robotics Investment Programme.
Tony Blair and William Hague have today urged the Government to seize the opportunities of robotics to grow the UK’s economy, by creating new datasets to train robots in healthcare, greater support for SMEs automating processes in manufacturing and agriculture, and a new £100m Robotics Investment Programme.
The former Labour Prime Minister and Conservative Leader argue that technological advances mean that in the next decade AI-driven robots will become an increasingly common part of working and everyday life.
In time to come and not that many years away, we can envisage a world in which your self-driving car takes you to work, the food you eat is harvested by robots, and your deliveries are packed by smart machines and dispatched by drone. Such applications would help boost the UK’s sluggish economic growth, make public services more effective, and free up time in people’s daily lives.
In their fourth joint paper, Blair and Hague warn that the UK currently has the least advanced robotics sector in the G7 and is at risk of falling further behind other countries. The United States is home to the majority of leading robotics companies, while China, Japan and South Korea have each announced hundreds of millions of dollars in dedicated state-backed robotics funds and programmes.
But they argue that as robotics becomes more linked to artificial intelligence, where the UK does have significant strengths, the country has the opportunity to catch up.
As Tony Blair and William Hague say in their foreword: “Much of the impact of AI so far has been delivered digitally, through generative AI tools like ChatGPT. But many future advances will be delivered in the physical world, through robots that act as the arms and legs of AI. From self-driving cars and delivery drones to industry robots, AI-enabled robotics will transform our economy, public services, and daily life.
“Today, the UK has the least advanced robotics sector in the G7, with half the robots per worker in the automotive industry that Germany has. However, the fact that robotics increasingly intersects with AI – where we do have strengths – gives Britain an opportunity to catch up. This report sets out how the new Government can seize this opportunity and realise the transformative long-term benefits of robotics by addressing challenges in innovation, commercialisation, and governance.”
To get the UK back on track, they propose greater investment in the robotics research being led by the Advanced Research and Innovation Agency (ARIA), as well as a new £100m Robotics Investment Programme to provide robotics startups with the follow-on funding they need to grow and commercialise UK research.
They also urge the Government to bring forward funding for “Made Smarter” and “Grow Smarter” adoption programmes, to help SMEs invest in automation across manufacturing and agriculture.
The Blair-Hague paper also puts forward several recommendations both to build public trust in the technology and mitigate the potential impact on employment.
The report recommends prioritising robotic automation of ‘dull, dirty and dangerous’ tasks. Humans’ roles can therefore shift to supervision and management of teams of robots, resulting in greater safety and job satisfaction for workers. Alongside this, the government should develop a long-term strategy to support those whose jobs may be impacted by automation, such as a long-term retraining fund.
Other recommendations in the report include the reallocation of some UKRI funding to robotics research; increased financial support for regulators affected by robotics; and amending the Science and Technology Framework to include robotics and embodied AI as a sixth critical technology.