Today, the UK’s Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, has announced the formal launch of the ‘AI Opportunities Action Plan’, a wide-ranging State-backed effort to drive AI use and thus more economic growth. But, will the legal and legal tech sectors benefit from this?
First, what is it? In broad terms it’s an update on plans already shared back in July, but essentially it will focus on:
- ‘Helping to turbocharge growth and boost living standards,
- [Helping] the public sector to spend less time doing admin and more time delivering the services working people rely on,
- Dedicated AI Growth Zones to speed up planning for AI infrastructure, [ e.g. around speeding up development of UK-based data centres, which will be needed to support the growth of genAI needs.]
All well and good. But how does this manifest itself? The plan adds that with support from the Government, including changing planning rules for data centres, this will mean:
- ‘Increasing the public compute capacity by twentyfold to give us the processing power we need to fully embrace this new technology – this starts immediately with work starting on a brand-new supercomputer.
- A new team will be set up to seize the opportunities of AI and build the UK’s sovereign capabilities
- Creating a new National Data Library to safely and securely unlock the value of public data and support AI development
- A dedicated AI Energy Council chaired by the Science and Energy Secretaries will also be established, working with energy companies to understand the energy demands and challenges which will fuel the technology’s development – this will directly support the government’s mission to become a clean energy superpower by tapping into technologies like small modular reactors.
- Taken together, these measures (and others among a total of 50 measures) will make the UK irresistible to AI firms looking to start, scale, or grow their business.’
On one level it sounds fairly mundane, e.g. the PM’s statement notes that the plan will ‘help drive down admin [with AI] for teachers so they can get on with teaching our children, and feed AI through cameras to spot potholes and help improve roads’.
(Although one has to doubt whether AI camera feeds in public places will mainly be used to spot pot holes…..but, rather they’ll be used for other security and policing needs in addition. But, that’s probably not such a crowd-pleaser….)
And on the point about absorbing admin in the State sector, e.g. schools, the Civil Service and other areas, this sounds great. Although one wonders if Civil Servants, the ultimate bureaucrats, will embrace the idea of AI doing some of their paperwork? We can all certainly hope they do. But, one can envisage some job cuts as a result perhaps at the lowest end of the payscales.
Then there is the point that all of this AI will drive growth. The Prime Minister’s office notes: ‘The IMF estimates that – if AI is fully embraced – it can boost productivity by as much as 1.5 percentage points a year. If fully realised, these gains could be worth up to an average £47 billion to the UK each year over a decade.’
I.e. more AI = more growth. And that, as explored in AL with regard to the legal sector, does seem to be true. That is to say, whether we call it AI, or something else like ‘automation’, tech allows people to do more, to be more productive. In areas where the work is complex, it’s a force multiplier, and in areas where the tasks are very simple but tedious it takes over those roles. Either way, it drives up value creation and should increase total economic through-put, if the UK can rise to the challenge.
Not that the UK, and much of the West, has much choice. The rest of the world is embracing AI and automation, and if we sit on our hands then we will be left behind – and given that the UK is the home of the first Industrial Revolution, and birthplace of the world’s first computer thanks to Alan Turing, it would be tragic if we became an anachronism on the world stage.
Lawyers and Legal Tech
This site is still going through the detail of the plan, but in terms of the top line issues it has raised, what will help law firms and legal tech? Here’s some thoughts:
- First, on a practical level, if more data centres are built that provides some additional work for law firms focused on these types of projects. Likewise, the construction of a new supercomputer may provide a smidgin of new work. The same goes for changes to the energy sector (see above), and also advising on the use of State-based data, e.g. NHS data (the National Health Service is already working with Palantir, the US AI company). But, overall this won’t move the dial much nationally, but will give some firms several nice streams of work.
- More broadly, what will help law firms is the hope that more use of AI will become the norm. That helps in two ways: it means a higher demand for advice on AI use, e.g. compliance / risk, and more optimistically it may create more work of all types if the UK sees higher economic growth, i.e. more activity = more legal demand.
- For the legal tech world the most immediate benefit may come not from providing solutions to public workers to soak up admin tasks, but perhaps from more inhouse legal teams which have increased their demand for AI solutions as part of a wider normalisation of using such tech. The same may go for law firms, although, in both cases this site has seen very strong interest in legal AI across the sector without the need for any prodding from Government.
- The building of more data centres may possibly have some GDPR benefits for legal tech companies and law firms, but probably not that massive, i.e. they can keep data in the UK. Likewise, a massive new super computer in the UK probably won’t have many direct benefits either.
So, this is all very welcome. But, the benefits, as seen so far as listed by the Government press office, seem to be broad and diffuse when it comes to lawyers and legal tech. But, it’s a good start and it’s positive to see the Government embracing with enthusiasm the idea that AI can soak up process-level work to allow for higher value activities across the economy. Britain certainly needs an economic growth boost, and if it’s not AI helping to drive things, then it’s not clear what else we can do….?
(Please send ideas for better growth to the Right Honourable Rachel Reeves. Thanks. )
