“Artificial intelligence is very much an umbrella term,” says Mark Girolami. “When we say AI, what we’re really describing is a whole load of technologies that are characterised by three components at their core: data, computing and algorithms.” Girolami, who has taken up the post of the Alan Turing Institute’s first chief scientist, says that while there are plenty of people out there crossing over into philosophy and neural sciences “solving intelligence”, his approach to AI is based on these three inter-related parameters. A University of Cambridge academic, he also holds the Royal Academy of Engineering research chair in data-centric engineering. The two positions “feed off each other”, he says.
Girolami’s appointment at the Alan Turing Institute comes hot on the heels of the UK government publishing its National AI Strategy, a ten-year plan “to make the UK a global AI superpower”. What this means is that the 58-year-old British scientist has stepped...