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Pathfounders · July 3 · 21 min

Emergency Podcast: How will Andy Burnham change the UK's AI strategy?

We’re looking at what could become a major reset coming for Britain’s AI strategy. According to the Financial Times, Andy Burnham, who is tipped to be the next UK Prime Minster, is exploring a shift away from the current policy towards one built around UK AI sovereignty, regional growth and re-skilling, as opposed to the more AI-forward approach we’d become used to under Sir Keir Starmer, who had wooed US tech giants like OpenAI and Anthropic, while promoting of home-grown AI companies. Indeed, it even launched a £500 sovereign AI fund. But are we about to see the rise of a far more tech-sceptical UK administration? Featured on this podcast: Host: Mike Butcher, Founder & Editor, Pathfounders.com and former Editor-at-large of TechCrunch. https://x.com/mikebutcher https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikebutcher Guest: Alys Key, an Editor, Writer and Journalist, who writes the Substack newsletter, UK2.0. https://x.com/@alys_key https://www.linkedin.com/in/alyskey/ Guest: Meryem Arik, Co-founder and CEO at Doubleword, which builds high-performance open source model inference infrastructure for AI at scale. https://x.com/@MeryemArik9 https://www.linkedin.com/in/meryemarik

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transcript

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show notes

We’re looking at what could become a major reset coming for Britain’s AI strategy. According to the Financial Times, Andy Burnham, who is tipped to be the next UK Prime Minster, is exploring a shift away from the current policy towards one built around UK AI sovereignty, regional growth and re-skilling, as opposed to the more AI-forward approach we’d become used to under Sir Keir Starmer, who had wooed US tech giants like OpenAI and Anthropic, while promoting of home-grown AI companies. Indeed, it even launched a £500 sovereign AI fund. But are we about to see the rise of a far more tech-sceptical UK administration? 


Featured on this podcast:


Host: Mike Butcher, Founder & Editor, Pathfounders.com and former Editor-at-large of TechCrunch. 

https://x.com/mikebutcher

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikebutcher


Guest: Alys Key, an Editor, Writer and Journalist, who writes the Substack newsletter, UK2.0.

https://x.com/@alys_key

https://www.linkedin.com/in/alyskey/


Guest: Meryem Arik, Co-founder and CEO at Doubleword, which builds high-performance open source model inference infrastructure for AI at scale.

https://x.com/@MeryemArik9

https://www.linkedin.com/in/meryemarik