A new consortium, backed by an £8m ($10.8m) initial investment from the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology’s (DSIT) newly established Sovereign AI Unit, has been announced by the UK government.

It will be based at Diamond Light Source facility at the Harwell Science Campus in Oxfordshire, where it will use the UK’s national synchrotron facility to generate data on how drugs interact with proteins.

The intended objective of the consortium is to close critical data gaps in order to drive breakthroughs in healthcare, engineering biology as well as related areas.

The consortium will harness AI to accomplish this over the next five year period by utilizing “automated chemistry and high-throughput X-ray crystallography to eventually generate more than 500,000 protein – ligand complex structures and affinity measurements”.

The government is attempting to attract investors in order to fund the consortium’s research touting its ambitions to cement the UK’s position as “a global hub for AI-driven drug discovery”.

Data on drugs

The announcement claims that the consortium will generate “the world’s largest collection of data on how drugs interact with proteins” that is “twenty times greater than anything collected over the last 50 years” and that will slash drug development costs by “up to £100bn” ($135bn).

Peter Kyle, the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, was ebullient in his comments. He said that the UK’s home-grown AI expertise will “be the driving force that doesn’t just treat, but beats disease”. He also suggested that the work of the consortium would benefit “every person in the world” and that it is an example of the UK harnessing “its opportunities for the global good.”

Alex Kirkhope, partner and head of the AI Practice at Shoosmiths, attended the London Tech Week event. He welcomed the announcements and said: “The OpenBind consortium, as well as announcements from businesses this week at London Tech Week, demonstrate the confidence from both the public and private sectors in making the UK an ‘AI maker, not an AI taker’ (in the prime minister’s words).

“There are still concerns, however, around the uncertainty created by the ongoing lack of dedicated AI regulation in the UK. This has not been helped by the delay to the government’s proposed AI Bill, now unlikely to be introduced until the next parliamentary session. The UK’s regulatory approach remains a balancing act.”

“While the amount invested is small this is the type of project where the UK can be a leader.”

Charles Kerrigan, Partner and AI specialist, CMS

Imperial College London has also announced a partnership with the World Economic Forum (WEF) to build a Centre for AI-Driven Innovation to be based in the UK. The government will help with the “co-design” of the new centre’s activities in order to “harness AI to deliver a new era of growth and opportunity.”

According to Hugh Brady, Imperial College London president, the new centre will create “a powerful multi-stakeholder platform from research through to scalable real-world innovation and adoption.”

“While the amount invested is small this is the type of project where the UK can be a leader,” says Charles Kerrigan, Partner, and AI specialist at law firm CMS. “We have a first-class biotech sector and top academic and tech talent in both biotech and AI.

“The UK’s challenge has always been commercialisation. The government should use this as a test to see if it can make money, not just create science. And always a hard part in anything connected to human health is deciding who owns, and who shares in the fruits of, any IP generated.” 

Supercomputer

And this week’s spending review reversed a decision by the current government to suspend funding for a supercomputer at Edinburgh university.

The exascale computer, only a few of which exist around the world, would provide cutting edge computing capability for key research and industry projects in the UK, facilitating work involving highly complex modelling in particular – including work connected to drug discovery.

The new supercomputer will be housed in a new wing of the Advanced Computing Facility and will be operated by the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre (EPCC) and its dedicated team of staff.

The university itself is a leading institution when it comes to data science research and development in the UK and has welcomed the announcement. Professor Peter Mathieson, vice-chancellor and principal, said that the university looks forward to “working alongside the UK Government and other partners to deliver this critical UK-wide resource.”

All of these developments are being positioned as part of the UK government’s Plan for Change.

This is being implemented in the hope that harnessing AI and related advanced technologies will deliver not only on present and future economic growth, but also improve the competitiveness of the UK economy by positioning it to contribute to and reap benefits from this new global innovation race

The government is hoping for improvements in productivity and efficiency as a direct result of the adoption of AI tools and technology within government departments other than the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. And it is not a coincidence that the FCA has just announced its own partnership with Nvidia to launch an enhanced sandbox for financial services firms.