Britain risks becoming 'second in the queue' for artificial intelligence unless it commits to greater investment in home-grown infrastructure, according to a Treasury AI champion. Harriet Rees, who serves as Starling Bank's chief information officer and advises the Treasury on AI matters within financial services, raised the concern as the bank announced a milestone.
Starling Bank has become the first UK lender to train an AI model using a sovereign cloud based in Britain, marking a step towards developing domestic AI capabilities independent of overseas infrastructure.