L

Lord Tarassenko (CB)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 16 June 2026

Debate

Artificial Intelligence: National Security Implications

Contribution

My Lords, I declare a conflict of interest as a senior adviser to the Alan Turing Institute, the national AI institute. We have known for a while that access to US big tech models might be restricted, and it will happen again. We should not rely on Chinese open source models either, for obvious reasons. There is an alternative: a UK sovereign AI model. The Alan Turing Institute has argued for several months that the UK has the technological capability in the institute, in academia and in its nascent AI industry. The UK also has sovereign data assets, such as data from the BBC and the Met Office. The Alan Turing Institute, as a national AI institute, could lead a team to train a sovereign model for millions of pounds, not billions of dollars, following UK values, including transparency and respect for copyright. The Council for Science and Technology’s AI subgroup and many others are convinced. What more evidence does DSIT need to fund the training of a UK sovereign AI model?

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