Britain could make first big AI breakthrough next year

THE first big breakthrough by Artificial Intelligence (AI) experts will happen in Britain within the next 12 months, according to the one of the UK’S leading neuroscientists.

The news emerged as a new report found that almost half of UK jobs could end up being done by robots.

Demi Hassabis, whose company Deepmind Technologies was bought by Google for £400 million in 2014, said: “I’m really looking forward to the first big science breakthrough that couldn’t have been done unless you have AI. And I think that may happen in 2018 in a field like biology or chemistry or something like that.”

Mr Hassabis told BBC Radio Four’s Today programme that he had turned down offers to move his company to Silicon Valley in California. He said: “I’m a proud born and bred Londoner. I love London and Britain and I think that I have always believed that we have top talent here.”

Mr Hassabis admitted it “may well be a good thing in the future” for “longer term regulation of AI itself”, although the approach has to be global.

A report by the Institute for Public Policy Research says that increasing automation has the potential to deliver a powerful boost to the productivity of UK business, but warns that unless the change was properly managed by the Government, there was a risk the benefits would be “narrowly” concentrated in the hands of investors and small numbers of highly-skilled workers while the rest lose out.

The report estimates that jobs generating wages of £290billion a year – a third of all wages and earnings from labour in the UK economy – have the potential to be automated. However, it rejects the idea that the country is heading for a “post-human” economy, arguing that most jobs are likely to be “reallocated” rather than eliminated.