The UK’s AI boom could be hampered by a lack of data infrastructure, the Open Data Institute (ODI) has warned in a report.

The non-profit research body, which was founded by internet creator Tim Berners-Lee, argues that AI technologies have significant potential to transform numerous industries including diagnostics and personalised education.

But it predicted the potential gains could be impeded by “significant weaknesses” in the UK’s tech infrastructure and urged the government to take a number of actions to remedy the situation.

This includes broader access to high-quality data from both the public and private sector; greater enforcement of data protection and labour rights in the data supply chain; updates to intellectual property laws to ensure AI models are being trained in a fair way; and increased transparency around the data used to train high-risk AI models.

The UK is currently one of the world leaders in AI technologies, with a market valued at $21bn. While not as large in scale...