The Imperial Policy Forum launched a new cohort of its Policy Fellowship for UK civil servants this week, with a focus on AI policy and regulation.

The second cohort of the Fellowship will strengthen connections between Imperial academics and senior policy officials, who will be working together over the next 6 months on emerging challenges and opportunities around artificial intelligence (AI). The programme launched with a series of presentations and workshops in I-X at Imperial's White City campus.

Among the 19 participating Fellows, there are officials from the Department of Health and Social Care, Department for Transport, Department for Science, Technology and Innovation, Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, Home Office, Prime Minister’s Office, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

AI for public services 

Some of the challenges to be addressed by the Fellows include exploration of novel and effective partnership models between industry and academia, with a focus on AI safety, how AI can be deployed in specific economic sectors to improve competitivness and the applications of artificial intelligence to government processes, decision-making, and services.

The group heard a presentation by Professor Tom Coates, Professor of Mathematics and National Security Fellow, on the fundamentals of Artificial Intelligence. Professor Coates showed how different AI tools and systems work, including some of their potential applications in government, ethical concerns around their adoption and potential benefits associated with the use of AI in public services.

Following that conversation, Professor Eric Yeatman, Co-Director of I-X, introduced the Fellows to the work of I-X and how it is adopting a multi-disciplinary approach to foundational and applied AI. Sana Wajid, Programme Director of Fetch.ai/, an AI agents company and an I-X Business Partner, also presented her own perspective of bringing AI services direct to consumers and how this market continues to rapidly change. 

The Fellows also visited the Biomedical Engineering Hub and the Henry Royce Institute at Imperial’s Sir Michael Uren Hub, to speak to scientists leading on cutting-edge work in their fields, and talk to them about some of Imperial’s pioneering AI and robotics science with applications in engineering, construction and healthcare.

Fellows will now work closely with academic mentors from Imperial on their individual projects, using insights from the latest AI research to further their own understanding about potential applications in the public sector. The programme will run until the end of July, with applications for the next cohort opening in Autumn.

If you are interested in the Policy Fellowship programme, please contact the Imperial Policy Forum team (the.forum@imperial.ac.uk).