Chair's Brief: Issue 09

The launch also included valuable contributions from Paul Oxley, Director General (Skills) at ADS Group; Brian Johnson, Chair of our strategic partner, Solent Freeport; and Faith Ruto from our Leadership and Skills team.

Their perspectives helped illustrate the breadth of the opportunity in front of us, from the importance of skills and industrial capability to the practical work already taking place across our region.

The following is a summary of the speech that I gave on the day.

The Government’s AI Opportunities Action Plan set out an ambitious vision for the UK’s future in artificial intelligence, including the creation of AI Growth Zones to bring together the infrastructure, compute and investment needed to support AI at scale.

Our region was not in a position to bid for one of those Growth Zones within the initial timescales.

That does not mean Hampshire and the Solent should play a smaller role in the UK’s AI future.

Quite the opposite.

This is a region that has spent decades at the forefront of British innovation. It is home to globally recognised organisations including IBM, Garmin and Hawk-Eye, alongside businesses at the heart of our defence and aerospace capability, such as QinetiQ, BAE Systems and Airbus.

We also have internationally respected universities and research centres, including the Web Science Institute at the University of Southampton and the Centre for Creative and Immersive Extended Reality at the University of Portsmouth.

We already have many of the ingredients needed for AI growth.

Our challenge has never been capability.

Our challenge has been coordination.

Bringing the Region Together

The AI Growth Alliance is our response to that challenge.

We are not asking Government to build our future for us. We are building the partnerships, strategy and capacity that will allow our region to seize the opportunities AI presents.

The Alliance brings together businesses, local government, universities and other partners with a simple purpose: to coordinate our regional approach to artificial intelligence and ensure Hampshire and the Solent have access to the skills, investment, infrastructure and partnerships needed to thrive in the AI economy.

To help achieve that, we have established four working groups, each focused on a critical part of our regional AI future.

The Infrastructure and Investment Working Group is mapping the infrastructure requirements needed to support data centres, AI-enabled learning environments, advanced connectivity and the wider digital infrastructure on which AI depends.

The Ecosystem Development Working Group is bringing together businesses, representative organisations, investors and innovators, helping us develop a coherent regional voice and a clear proposition for Government and inward investment.

The Ethics and Inclusion Working Group is helping ensure that AI benefits everyone, promoting responsible adoption and making certain that no community or part of our region is left behind.

And the Leadership and Skills Working Group is working with employers, universities and colleges to ensure that our workforce develops the skills needed for an AI-enabled future.

I was particularly pleased that we launched the Alliance with something tangible.

Too often, new organisations launch with aspirations alone.

We launched with delivery.

Our first published output was the AI Leadership and Skills Strategy for Hampshire and the Solent, developed through months of collaboration between senior leaders from our universities, colleges, employers and skills organisations.

I would like to place on record my sincere thanks to everyone who contributed to that work, particularly Suzanne Grant and Mandy Broughton, whose leadership was instrumental, together with the entire Leadership and Skills Working Group.

The strategy represents exactly the kind of collaborative, practical approach that the Alliance was created to encourage.

It complements the work already taking place through Local Skills Improvement Plans and sets out how our region can develop the leadership, talent and confidence needed to embrace AI responsibly.

The strategy is available here.

The launch was about more than a strategy document.

It was about making a statement that Hampshire and the Solent intend to play a full part in the UK’s AI future.

We are prepared to work together rather than compete with one another.

And by combining the strengths of business, academia and the public sector, we can build a regional ecosystem capable of attracting investment, developing talent and delivering innovation that benefits businesses, public services and our communities alike.

AI growth cannot be delivered by any one organisation alone. It depends on partnerships, shared ambition and a willingness to work together.

The launch at Farnborough was not the end of a year’s work.

It was the beginning of the next decade’s opportunity.

The task now is to turn our shared ambition into practical action: strengthening our infrastructure, supporting responsible adoption, developing skills, attracting investment and ensuring that the benefits of AI are widely shared.

That will require continued collaboration across the region.

It will also require more organisations, leaders, educators and communities to take part.

If you would like to contribute to the work of the AI Growth Alliance, I would be very pleased to hear from you.

Get Involved

If you have an interest in AI, skills, infrastructure, investment, responsible adoption, inclusion or regional economic development, we would love to hear from you.

Subscribe to this newsletter via:

https://newsletter.aigrowthalliance.co.uk/subscribe

Drop me a line:

[email protected]

Join the Alliance:

https://hub.futuretowns.soton.ac.uk/aiga

I look forward to working with all of you.

David Patterson

Chair, AI Growth Alliance

This week's Newsletter was written by David Patterson using a structure suggested by Claude and edited using Grammarly. All images created using Canva and this newsletter is produced and managed using beehiiv