Dame Wendy Hall: UK should not follow EU’s approach on AI

Dame Wendy Hall is optimistic that the UK’s sectoral approach to AI will be the correct way to proceed but she envisages that we will also see regulation. Laura Linkomies reports.

Dame Wendy Hall, DBE, FRS, FREng, Regius Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton, is well placed to evaluate the UK’s plans for AI. Not only was she a pioneer of multimedia and hypermedia in the years before the World Wide Web, but she was also co-Chair of the previous government’s AI Review published in October 2017, and a member of the AI Council. She advises the UK government and many other governments and companies around the world. In 2023, Hall was appointed to the United Nations’ high-level advisory body on artificial intelligence.

At the time of my interview, at the end of October, the government had just published the Data (Use and Access) Bill(1), but we have yet to see a general AI Bill. The King’s speech in July 2024 indicated that only the most powerful artificial intelligence models will be regulated, overseen by a new Regulatory Innovation Office(2). Hall implied, however, that the UK is not misguided to have a more narrowly focused approach different from the EU, and that there is more to come.

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