Smart machines: UK announces strategy for success

The Robotics Growth Partnership (RGP), an independent expert committee set up by HM Government in 2019, recently released its ‘Strategy for UK Leadership’ in the field of ‘Smart Machines’.

For those of you who have been working in this legal sector for some time, this document is considered the successor to the extremely influential RAS2020 Strategy that was originally published in 2014 and which set the scene for the development  of robotics and artificial intelligence regulation and approach in the UK.

What the RAS (Robotic Autonomous Systems) strategy set out then was ultimately derailed by a number of factors, including; Brexit; HM Government stasis as a result of Brexit; the Covid pandemic; and the rise of generative AI as if from nowhere.

What the new strategy does is to focus on 4 main ‘goals’ and is looking to receive feedback from interested parties (the feedback closes on 31st July!) in order to further develop its strategy moving forward.

These goals are:

1. Supply - developing the ecosystem of innovation and business. How does the UK turn itself into the ‘go-to’ place for businesses in this sector looking to develop and provide smart machine solutions?
2. Demand - driving adoption and uptake. How will the smart machines industry drive the adoption and use of these new technologies and products in public services, national infrastructure and UK businesses. The need for higher levels of productivity are clear but does this require a change to the national ‘mindset’ around the use of robots in the workplace?
3. Talent - ensuring that the UK continues to grow as a world leading home for smart machine science and engineering. This includes the need to develop specific expertise across multiple disciplines - like engineering, computer science, biology, materials development - and to maintain and increase the UK's participation in international partnerships.
4. Trust - developing regulation in order to increase the trust that people have in the machines and systems that are being used around them and to increase the UK's presence as a leading jurisdiction when it comes to product safety, the setting of ethical standards, governance processes and transparency in relation to smart machines.

All of the above objectives are perfectly sensible and to a degree reflect what was set out in 2014.

The great advantage the RGP has now is that the debate about the use of autonomous machines and their outputs, based upon the rise and rise of AI and generative AI especially, has enabled regulators to develop strategies and law (the EU AI Act comes into force on 1/8/2024) which should provide a very good template for how to deal with any issues concerning smart machines.

Product safety laws are well developed in most jurisdictions and in Europe particularly, the EU AI Act was developed out of a general feeling that safety is the key ingredient when it comes to the regulation of new technology. I see no reason why this type of approach adopted by the EU - looking at the technology, understanding whether it poses a ‘high risk’ or not based upon how and where it is used -  should not be followed closely.

If an algorithm is the ‘software’ of AI, then robots are its hardware and the regulation of autonomous machines in a networked environment, using the data that these machines have access to, should follow the lead that has been created for them.