2025 kicked off with a bang with a significant policy announcement from the UK government on 13 January, announcing the launch of the ‘AI Opportunities Action Plan’, a ‘blueprint to turbocharge AI development in the UK.
Compiled by tech entrepreneur Matt Clifford, this ambitious plan to ramp up AI development and adoption outlines how the UK will harness the opportunity of AI to ‘secure growth’, ‘raise living standards’ ‘put money in people’s pockets’ and ‘transform our public services’. According to the UK government, 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 of £47 billion to the UK each year over a decade.
There can be no doubt that this is an ambitious plan and if the UK wants to not simply stay in the AI race but to become an Al powerhouse, a bold, punchy action plan is what’s required. But questions are being raised about how feasible it will be to implement the 50 recommendations outlined in the report, and whether Keir Starmer’s stated ambition of the UK becoming ‘one of the greatest AI superpowers’ is realistic. As the government’s announcement makes clear, the benefits will only be realised if it is ‘fully embraced’.
Core to the plan is the pledge to boost supercomputing capacity through the creation of AI Growth Zones, designed to attract AI investment. However, questions remain about whether the UK will be able to meet the energy demands of such a large expansion. The plan also addresses the AI skills gap but many believe it could take a decade to embed the skills required into the educational curriculum.
Significantly, it has also been noted by some that Keir Starmer’s approach marks something of a departure from the previous government's stance, which was more aligned with AI safety as demonstrated by hosting the AI Safety Summit held at Bletchley Park in November 2023. The Bletchley declaration set out to ‘continue research on frontier AI safety to ensure that the benefits of the technology can be harnessed responsibly for good and for all.’
Following the announcement, Sharon Graham, General Secretary of the trade union Unite, raised her concerns about the impact of AI on workers saying, “The UK needs to embrace new technologies, but we also need proper protections from AI’s pitfalls and workers must have a say in how that happens.”
While the Prime Minister’s speech did address AI safety, he also made the point, “We shouldn’t just focus on safety”.
It’s an exciting and potentially transformative time for anyone involved in AI and the plan will have implications for us all. In the second Insights With Impact Poll of 2025, we asked Chief Disruptor members, “What are your thoughts on the UK government’s ‘AI Opportunities Action plan?”, with the options, ‘UK will become an AI superpower’, ‘What about AI safety? ’Lack of AI skills is a risk’ and ‘Not enough infrastructure’. There was a lot of interest in this poll and the results revealed that members are sceptical about the chances of success with only a small number opting for, ‘the UK will become an AI superpower.’
The most popular response was, ‘Lack of AI skills’, an all too common concern for IT leaders. The government has admitted that for the plan to be successful, it will need to train tens of thousands of AI professionals.
So is this ambition feasible? It’s been stated that there are plans to strengthen the AI talent pipeline by increasing the number of AI graduates and through a review of the visa system. Other options on the table might include creating new apprenticeships, or a renewed focus on professional development. But given the speed of AI developments, it could be tricky for educators to keep pace with the evolving skills that businesses will require. We spoke to Tony Jaskeran , Business Performance & Risk Director at GLP about his concerns.
“In my view, the UK’s AI Action Plan risks failure due to a lack of AI skills. A shortage of data scientists, AI engineers, and regulatory experts could delay implementation, increase reliance on foreign AI, and reduce productivity gains. Without skilled professionals, AI safety, ethics, and efficiency may suffer, leading to public distrust. Investments in supercomputers and AI infrastructure will be underutilised without a trained workforce, assuming there is money to invest. Public sector employees may also struggle to adapt. To succeed, the government must prioritise AI education, workforce reskilling, and regulatory expertise, ensuring AI delivers economic growth, service improvements, and long-term competitive advantage.“
As mentioned previously in this article, the government has outlined its ambition to create dedicated AI Growth Zones to speed up planning permission and give them the energy connections they need to power up AI. These AI Growth Zones will host giant AI data centres with access to land and power and construction will be fast-tracked through special streamlined planning services. Interestingly, our poll has cast some doubt on how realistic that aim might be as the second most popular response was ‘not enough AI Infrastructure.’ Günter Richter, Head of Business Consulting at Telefonica Tech (EN) gave us his thoughts on the new plan:
“In terms of barriers, I feel that infrastructure is one of the key ones because it feels like this is a game of catch-up. And the UK government has a notoriously bad track record of infrastructure projects, technology and other large-scale initiatives. My other concern is that this infrastructure is funded by the public purse and then ends up in control of a corporation, but maybe that is just the sceptic in me. With the right level of governance and pragmatism, the build-out could be a good boost to the economy.“
Certainly, experts agree that these ambitious targets will not be reached without rapidly scaling our energy supply. Data centres are notoriously energy-intensive to operate both in running their computer systems and in cooling the computers to maintain their functionality. The National Energy System Operator (NESO) projects that data centres will quadruple their electricity demand by 2030. To combat these challenges, the government has announced a new AI energy council to work with energy companies to address the challenges posed by the increased energy demands of AI.
When it comes to the third most popular choice in our poll, it’s apparent that some members are concerned that the UK is jettisoning safety in the name of innovation and speed. The UK's position on AI regulation does appear to deviate from that of the EU, whose AI Act imposes more significant restrictions and obligations on businesses.
Tim Willmott, Programme Manager at Dr Martens who is responsible for the definition and execution of Dr Martens' Data Strategy, told us about his concerns:
"My thoughts were mainly around complications introduced through data governance requirements combined with the use of public cloud or virtual private clouds. When used internally to drive insights, people are looking to use them not only on structured data within data warehouse solutions such as Snowflake but also on documents within locations like Sharepoint or code repositories. In my experience, these are usually not well governed or tagged with appropriate meta-data to allow appropriate governance. Or, when they are, they can be overbearing and affect productivity. There are inherent risks with allowing the training data to be used and replicated in an uncontrolled manner, plus with how the post-prompt outputs are displayed and controlled. I think there needs to be more work needed to provide appropriate architecture, services and standards to allow this all to happen in a secure, but easy-to-use manner."
So is it a case of ambition versus reality? Moving onto the least popular option in our poll,‘the UK will be an AI super-power, the very low number of responses to that statement signals a lack of confidence in the government’s ability to successfully embrace and implement the recommendations in the report. With more clarity on the implementation timeline due in spring, and further frameworks and pilots to follow in the summer and autumn of this year, that sentiment could of course change. Meanwhile, business leaders should be completing the due diligence and planning now to ensure that they are ready to capitalise on this ground-breaking investment and to help make this ambition a reality.
Finally, I’ll leave you with some thoughts from Günter Richter, Head of Business Consulting at Telefonica Tech (EN), who despite having some concerns regarding implementation, supports the ambition outlined in the plan.
“Generally, I think there are some really solid ambitions in the plan. I was particularly happy that they have addressed the human impact such as skills development, user adoption challenges, safety and trust, and job creation.