UK funds Oxford and UCL labs to make AI easier to use

The UK government will fund new AI research labs led by Oxford and UCL, making up to £60 million available through UKRI’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council over the next 6 years. The labs will focus on foundational work intended to make AI cheaper to run, more dependable and easier for businesses, researchers and public services to adopt.

The Science of Fundamental AI Research Lab, led by Professor David Barber at UCL with Cambridge, Oxford and Edinburgh, will develop open-source AI technologies that can run on widely available hardware. The British Open-ended Learning and Discovery Lab, led by Professor Jakob Foerster at Oxford with UCL and Imperial College London, will explore more efficient learning systems that can adapt to new situations and navigate physical spaces.

The programme also includes access to large-scale computing power worth tens of millions of pounds. Each lab will earmark £2 million per lab for hiring at least 10 doctoral students, and will work with existing UK AI research groups including the Alan Turing Institute and UKRI’s AI research hubs.