By 2033, the global AI chip market is projected to reach $700bn (£620bn) a year, outstripping the whole of today's semiconductor market. By 2033, the global AI chip market is projected to reach $700bn (£620bn) a year, outstripping the whole of today's semiconductor market. Britain's legacy in chip design is world-class, and we could supply up to 5% of global demand if we get our act together Thu 13 Nov 2025 13.26 ESTLast modified on Thu 13 Nov 2025 14.08 EST The UK is in a uniquely promising position, far too little understood, to play a lucrative role in the coming era of artificial intelligence - but only if it also grabs the opportunity to start making millions of computer chips. AI requires vast numbers of chips and we could supply up to 5% of world demand if we get our national act together. Our legacy in chip design is world-class, starting with the first general-purpose electronic computer, the first electronic memory and the first parallel computer.

Research shows the UK is behind its global counterparts on AI adoption and reskilling

Experts believe that both the accountancy and audit industries are on the cusp of an automation transformation in 2020, guided by the incredible growth of robotic process automation (RPA) and artificial intelligence (AI) throughout the last few years. As automation software becomes mainstream technology within the industry, experts from across the field believe that 2020 will be a transformative year as more accountancy firms use both RPA and AI within their practices. Aaron Harris, Chief Technology Officer at Sage, explained: "At the moment, only big enterprises are employing RPA at scale. In 2020, we'll start to see this trickle down to small and medium-sized businesses. "RPA software revenue grew 63.1% in 2018 to $846m and will grow further to $1.3bn in 2019.

Nearly all of the UK's core industries is set to invest heavily into artificial intelligence (AI) in the coming years, but they will also invest in the human workforce and don't expect a significant reduction in headcount as a result of AI investments. This is according to a new international study conducted by IFS. Polling 600 enterprise decision-makers, the report states that 99 per cent of UK's respondents confirmed plans to invest in AI. This puts the UK firmly ahead of North America and the rest of Europe and puts it on course to becoming an AI powerhouse. For Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Enterprise Asset Management (EAM), and Field Service Management (FSM) industries, AI would be used to increase the productivity among the current workforce (60 per cent), and to add extra value to products and services (48 per cent).

The adoption of AI and automation tech in the UK is still being stunted by a lack of digital skills in businesses. That is the according to new research by Rainbird, an AI-powered automated decision-making platform. The research surveyed senior decision-makers in enterprise organisations, and that the main reason behind businesses not implementing AI is a shortage of talent in their workforce for handling automation processes. The data suggests a number of different concerns across business functions, including a lack of regulation at 87.5 per cent. In financial services it reports that the technology's "lack of transparency" inhibits its adoption, whereas within the IT industry shortage of talent has become a major hurdle.

UK companies that are too slow to adopt artificial intelligence technology are at risk of losing 20% of their cash flow, according to McKinsey Global Institute. New figures released by consultancy firm's research arm claimed that the UK's economy could be boosted 22% by AI alone on the next decade, with fast-moving businesses potentially growing 120% if they invest in AI tools. It claimed the UK is "potentially more AI-ready compared with the global average", but could miss out on the opportunity if investment does not occur. "The United Kingdom has impressive pockets of innovation but is failing to scale to business more broadly," the report stated. Google's DeepMind AI division was cited at an example of these innovation pockets, with McKinsey suggested that companies can replicate by achieving growth through AI by offering it at scale, investing in talent and forging links between cutting-edge research and commercial success.

China's Tencent Holdings is tying up with a technology firm from the United Kingdom called Medopad Ltd to use artificial intelligence for the purpose of improving Parkinson's disease treatment. The company is collaborating with Medopad to develop a system to remotely monitor patients with severe movement disorder. The company said that the basic goal is to allow doctors to set drug doses and modify care without patients having to go to the hospital. Healthcare is increasingly "not only about what happens in the clinic, but what happens in the real world", Wei Fan, Tencent's executive director for medical AI research said. "The reason we want to work with Medopad is they're experts in monitoring patients."

This week we speak to Stan Boland, founder and chief executive of UK driverless car company Five AI. As firms around the world race to develop self-driving cars, Stan Boland is betting that British brain power can beat American and Chinese cash. A veteran technology entrepreneur, the 58-year-old launched Five AI in 2016. Since then it has been moving as quickly as possible to design a driverless car that - the hope is - will at some point in the future gain regulatory approval to take to the roads without someone being behind the wheel as a human failsafe. The problem is that, compared with US giants Google, Uber and Tesla, Five AI is a tiny start-up company with only a fraction of the funding that its rivals' driverless car projects are receiving.

New research highlights some of the most important actions available to executives. McKinsey research has long demonstrated the wide gap between productivity levels in different countries. Research in 2015, for example, suggested that if the degree of productivity dispersion among the bottom 75 percent of UK firms matched that of Germany, the United Kingdom would be more than £100 billion better off annually as measured by incremental gross value added (GVA). This analysis also showed that a major reason for that discrepancy is the United Kingdom's relatively slower diffusion of digital technologies and proven business practices among the bulk of its business population. We set out recently to investigate what drives, and holds back, the diffusion of technology-enabled business practices, using a mix of academic literature, studies from multinational organizations such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the World Economic Forum, and in-depth interviews with business leaders and other experts.

Top UK law firms are ahead of their US counterparts in the use of artificial intelligence (AI), an index of legal service delivery innovation has suggested. The Legal Services Innovation Index, based on internet searches of law firm websites for indications of innovation, was devised by the College of Law at Michigan State University in the US. Academics searched the websites of firms from the Am Law 200, Global 100, and the Canadian top 30, in August 2017. They looked for mentions of innovations in 10 categories, including data analytics, AI (including'machine learning'), blockchain (including'smart contracts'), and alternative fee arrangements. In the results, by jurisdiction UK law firm websites returned 2,068 page'hits' in total for the 10 search terms, compared to 672 for the US firms and 666 for Chinese firms.