UK Research and Innovation<\/a>, rated his agency only \u201cthree out of 10\u201d in promoting growth so far as he set out plans to tie funding more closely to sectors prioritised by ministers. <\/p>\nTen sectors \u2014 including defence, the creative industries, professional services, life sciences and green energy \u2014 will share \u00a312bn in funding over four years. The overhaul of how UKRI spends money is designed to support the industrial strategy set out by the UK government earlier this year.<\/p>\n
The government has promised a 14 per cent increase in research spending by 2029-30, to an annual total of \u00a310bn, and Chapman told the Financial Times he wanted to plough \u201cpretty much all\u201d of the increase into projects that had the potential to boost growth.<\/p>\n
Pure academic funding, through research councils and other bodies, will remain broadly stable at \u00a314.5bn over the next four years.<\/p>\n
Chapman said that Britain\u2019s research infrastructure was a \u201clatent asset that we could sweat more to drive our economy at large\u201d, saying the new spending plan was \u201cbeing very overt that what we\u2019re trying to do is drive the economy\u201d. <\/p>\n
AI will be allocated \u00a31.6bn over four years, the biggest single area, while life sciences will get \u00a31.5bn, advanced manufacturing \u00a31.4bn, clean energy \u00a31.2bn and quantum computing \u00a31bn. <\/p>\n
Increases were \u201cbetween 50 per cent and 100 per cent\u201d for the priority areas, Chapman said, with the biggest proportional increase going to the creative industries, which will get \u00a3369mn as ministers aim to boost areas such as film, television, advertising, music and video games. <\/p>\n
Chapman said the video games sector was a \u201cbig, significant global market\u201d where the UK was \u201chome to a number of extremely successful\u201d companies. \u201cThere is a lot of underpinning high tech in that, and so innovation and research can really drive you to higher quality products,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re going to go after that.\u201d<\/p>\n
On AI, he acknowledged it would be \u201cmental\u201d for Britain to try to compete with global giants such as Nvidia and that it \u201cdoesn\u2019t make sense\u201d to enter crowded areas such as large language models. \u201cThat is being done at a much larger scale than we could ever invest in in the private sector already,\u201d he said. \u201cWhereas we can absolutely compete on the next-generation technology where there is not a crowded space.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said this could include \u201cnext-generation transformers and algorithms\u201d aiming at lower energy consumption, saying he wanted to go into areas where it was less crowded and \u201cpotentially higher risk, but more transformative if it all comes off\u201d. <\/p>\n
Fewer projects are likely to get awards, but those that do are set to be bigger. \u201cI don\u2019t want to give crumbs to everybody. I want to give a meal to some people,\u201d said Chapman. <\/p>\n
While some question the government\u2019s ability to pick the most promising technologies, Chapman argued that part of the role of public funding was to back projects that might fail. \u201cWe should have a higher risk tolerance for things not working,\u201d he said, arguing that even failed projects might produce knowledge that was useful elsewhere. <\/p>\n
He argued that taxpayer funding could entice private investors to launch projects in the UK rather than elsewhere, saying that for more commercial projects he would expect private funding to more than match government investment. <\/p>\n
Science organisations have welcomed the government\u2019s commitment to research, but say that higher education funding squeezes are harming its ambitions, alongside other issues such as visa restrictions.<\/p>\n
Chapman defended prioritising areas that produce growth. Fostering innovative companies in Britain \u201cmeans there is more money in the system, more taxes being paid, which allows us to put more money in at the top end and fill the hopper\u201d for pure research, he said. <\/p>\n
Additional reporting by Michael Peel<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":321176,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-321175","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-technology","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=321175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321175\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/321176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}