Towards a Digital Industrial Strategy
Yesterday the UK Government published its National AI Strategy, and it’s quite interesting. Certainly, I consider it a very positive move that the UK has some strategy in this regard, and it is quite clear that some promising thinkers are contributing to the intellectual debate happening within national government. But I was rather disappointed to see the relative lack of any significant consideration for the role local and regional government could play here.
Now I know it’s a national plan, so maybe I’m unjustified in my critique in this regard, but it’s also meant to be strategic, and I would assert that are many strategic advantages to embracing a more municipalist view which the current report misses. I should say that much of the debate regarding AI regulation and data from a policy perspective is much more a debate about whether we care about the individual, the company, the city, or the state, and so on, so my views are not necessarily representative. I am biased in the outlook I champion. But I champion it for a reason…
Geographic Value
Good industrial strategy understands that economic value has a geographic component to it. If we build a factory in town A, most of its employees will come from town A, and spend their money in town A, creating business opportunities in town A, and so on. Better still, if the…
