Liz Kendall has strongly supported the deployment of driverless cars on Britain’s roads and warned that failing to back UK startups developing the tech would leave the market open to dominance by foreign competitors.
In a podcast interview with Sifted, Britain’s secretary for Science, Innovation and Technology, said: “We should be backing British companies in this technology because if we don’t, we’ll end up reliant on US companies, which is precisely what some people are worried about.”
She said autonomous driving was an important market of the future that could help parents transport their children and elderly parents more easily and enable women to travel more safely. “I want that available for all,” she said.
The tech secretary also endorsed the London-based startup Wayve, which builds autonomous vehicle technology, as a “brilliant British success story.”
Wayve, co-founded by the Kiwi entrepreneur Alex Kendall (no relation), is launching pilot driverless robotaxis on London’s streets in partnership with Uber later this year.
But Britain’s streets are set to become a battleground for international competition with Waymo, the autonomous car arm of Alphabet, and Baidu of China also planning on launching autonomous taxis in the UK capital.
Kendall’s remarks followed a report in the FT last week that the team advising likely future prime minister Andy Burnham was looking to revamp the government’s AI strategy and was questioning the rollout of the technology, fearing it would lead to mass job losses among taxi and Uber drivers. The report caused an uproar in Britain’s tech sector, with founders fearing the next government would roll back recent initiatives to support the industry.
Kendall argued that while the government backed the introduction of new technologies, it also needed to manage their societal impacts. The Labour government was committed to helping workers through the jobs transition, she said. “We’re not like the Tories in the 80s and 90s, who saw whole industries decimated and left people to cope on their own,” she said.
Kendall, who comes from the Blairite wing of the party and contested the leadership election against Burnham in 2015 (ultimately won by Jeremy Corbyn), said she was keen to remain in her post, which she only took on last year. But that decision would entirely depend on the next prime minister.
“I’d love to stay in my job,” she said. “I absolutely love doing this job, especially in this country at this time.”
‘AI must remain a core strategic priority for the government’
Kendall said when it comes to AI, she believes the UK is “genuinely third in the world outside of America and China”, and that the country needs to capitalise on that.
“My job, the government’s job, whoever is the prime minister and whoever is the secretary of state, is to seize the opportunities of AI, to make it work for the British people and to deal with its inevitable challenges and risks,” she said.
Asked whether Burnham and his team shared that vision, Kendall said: “I believe they do. I know he has a big vision for reindustrialising the country, for growth in every corner of the country. And I don’t believe that you can do that without AI.
“I’m certainly speaking to his team about all of these issues,” she said. “I think it’s a crucial moment for Britain. I think the next 24 months are mission critical for us.”
“The choice isn’t between having this technology or not, to somehow sort of stop AI. The choice is between seizing it and shaping it to work for us, or being left at its mercy or whim,” she said. “AI must remain a core strategic priority for the government.”
Kendall said that the government’s decision to create a Sovereign AI unit, with £500m of funding, would probably count as one of its most important achievements in office. She acknowledged that the scale of government funding was small in comparison with the colossal amounts of money being invested by the US hyperscalers.
But she said the investments the unit had already made in Ineffable Intelligence, Isomorphic Labs and Callosum, were models for the future that could help unlock broader government support. “It’s the speed of venture backed by the power of the nation,” she said.
The government has also unveiled a £1.1bn plan to support startups in AI hardware and novel chip technology. Kendall said Britain had a “very, very long and proud history” in AI hardware, citing companies such as Arm and Inmos. “Everybody should just push us to do more,” she said.
The next challenge would be to promote government procurement from British tech companies, which she described as the “holy grail”.
Kendall also acknowledged more needed to be done to mobilise additional growth capital for British companies. She did not specifically endorse a recent proposal from Andy Haldane, the president of the British Chambers of Commerce, to introduce a “home bias” for UK pension funds. But she said she had supported British pension funds committing more capital to domestic companies in her previous role at the Department for Work and Pensions.
“I’m sure you’ll be hearing a lot more about this in the coming weeks and months,” she said. “My responsibility at DSIT is to use every possible lever that I have to back more British AI companies because we do need that greater sovereign control.”
Kendall also hinted that Britain might soon be able to join the €5bn EU Scaleup Fund. “We’re very passionate about doing that,” she said. “Watch this space.”
