PROGRAMME 6

DEVELOP SUPPORT PLAN FOR BUSINESSES TO ADOPT AI

A beige plaster textured floor with train tracks erupting from a colourful block tower.  The Biulding block tower is orange, pale blues and yellows. Two of the five train tracks continue off the edge of the image and the other three stop are broken.

image credit: Khyati Trehan / DeepMind / UNSPLASH

 
 

Strategy Actions

3.6 Create opportunities for people, businesses and organisations to get hands-on experience of AI

3.8 Conduct an audit of Scotland AI Ecosystem, across industry, academia and public sector identifying strengths and opportunities

 

Year 2 Progress

Tech Scalers Network 

In July 2022, the Scottish Government awarded a five-year £42m contract to Codebase for the delivery of a national network of Tech Scalers. This will see the creation of seven technology hubs, delivering world-class commercial education, both online and in person, to support the next generation of Scottish start-ups. Tech scalers are a major piece of infrastructure designed to support the creation of more tech start-ups in Scotland, and to help them to grow to scale. The Tech Scalers are dedicated to the intensive schooling of tech entrepreneurs and will provide long-term incubation space, access to experienced mentors and intensive founder team education where our start-ups will be exposed to the most current and best tech playbooks. 

Opportunities to get hands-on experience of AI 

Access to generative language models was democratised in late 2022 with the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, giving everyone an opportunity to play (and work) with AI, and to experience for themselves the strength and benefits of such models as well as their risks and limitations.  

That sudden democratisation has made all the more urgent the Alliance’s work on supporting people and businesses to gain a clear understanding of AI, how to make it work in practice, and how to hold it to account. The launch of the AI Playbook and the AI Register were important milestones, and we will continue to develop those tools and investigate other mechanisms to support this aim.