This is according to newly published figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), which aims to support and promote the interests of the UK automotive industry at home and further afield.
The numbers released by the trade association shows that across all vehicle types, new car registrations reached 1.9 million last year, an increase of nearly 18% compared to 2022.
When it comes to battery electric vehicles — or BEVs — around 315,00 new vehicles were sold. This is roughly 50,000 more than in 2022, and represents a change of 17.8%. However, its market share in 2023 was 16.5%, which is narrowly down on 2022’s figure of 16.6%.
According to the SMMT, the majority of battery electric vehicles accounted for in 2023 were also bought by business and fleet buyers who benefitted from tax incentives — only one in 11 private consumers chose an electric vehicle over another type of car.
In light of the stalled market share and the low proportion of consumers buying BEVs, the trade association is calling on the UK Government to help private buyers by halving VAT on new electric vehicles for three years.
The body said that the temporary cut would give consumers access to financial support at a similar level to that of business buyers, and also help manufacturers to deliver larger volumes of zero emissions vehicles.
Further, the SMMT estimated that by halving VAT, consumers would have around £7.7 billion in additional BEV buying power by the end of 2026, and that it would encourage an extra 270,00 new car buyers in Britain to go electric.
The call for consumer buying incentives comes just days after the UK Government introduced new laws mandating the switch to electric vehicles, with the end goal of having 100% of new cars and vans sold in the UK to be zero emission by 2035.
Commenting on the zero emission vehicle mandate and consumer incentives like a VAT cut, Mike Hawes, the chief executive of the SMMT, said: “Government has challenged the UK automotive sector with the world’s boldest transition timeline and is investing to ensure we are a major maker of electric vehicles.
“It must now help all drivers buy into this future, with consumer incentives that will make the UK the leading European market for ZEVs.”
Wanting to make 2024 “the year of the AI PC,” Microsoft is introducing a button to Windows keyboards for Copilot, the company’s artificial intelligence-powered assistant.
The introduction of the Copilot key, which will be placed next to the right-hand side alt button, marks the first big change to the Windows keyboard layout since 1994, when the Windows key was added.
The new key will effectively provide users with a more accessible way to launch Windows’ Copilot service, which can be used for a range of general- and work-related tasks like content generation, pulling information from the web, and adjusting PC settings.
Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s executive vice president and consumer chief marketing officer, stated that over the coming days — and in the lead up to next week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas — we’ll start to see more of the Copilot key on new Windows 11 PCs from the company’s ecosystem partners.
Additionally, the executive specified that availability of PCs with the integrated Copilot button will begin in late February through Spring, including on upcoming Surface devices.
While it certainly hasn’t been uncommon for Big Tech companies to integrate GenAI capabilities into their products and services over the last year following ChatGPT’s unveiling, the incorporation of the Copilot key is a physical — and visual — reminder of Microsoft’s commitment to artificial intelligence.
“Nearly 30 years ago, we introduced the Windows key to the PC keyboard that enabled people all over the world to interact with Windows,” Mehdi said. “We see this as another transformative moment in our journey with Windows where Copilot will be the entry point into the world of AI on the PC.”
Judging by the executive’s remarks, it also seems that today’s announcement will be but the first this year concerning Microsoft’s holistic approach to embedding artificial intelligence into Windows products.
“In this new year, we will be ushering in a significant shift toward a more personal and intelligent computing future where AI will be seamlessly woven into Windows from the system, to the silicon, to the hardware,” he revealed.
“This will not only simplify people’s computing experience but also amplify it, making 2024 the year of the AI PC.”
The Pathways Forward programme, launched in September following the publication of the Scottish Government-commissioned Pathways: A New Approach For Women in Entrepreneurship report, has appointed an advisory group to make further progress on the report’s recommendations.
Carolyn Jameson, professor Eleanor Shaw OBE, and Jo Forster join the advisory board while Darina Garland and Mark Logan OBE have been appointed as advisors, together making up the advisory group. They join Ana Stewart, Pathways Forward chair and co-author of the Pathways report, which highlighted the obstacles women in Scotland face in entrepreneurship.
Speaking on the new advisory group and its creation, Stewart said: “So many individuals have supported us along the way, and continue to support our efforts, but we also wanted to formalise an advisory group to bring even more focus to the very considerable job in hand to remove barriers for women starting and leading businesses in Scotland.”
Jameson is experienced at scaling businesses, having held roles including chief trust and consumer officer at Trustpilot, head of international M&A and corporate development at Ctrip, and chief legal officer at Skyscanner. She is on the boards of Ten Lifestyle Group plc and the Scottish National Investment Bank, and sits on the investment advisory committee for venture capital firm Scottish Equity Partners (SEP).
Prof Eleanor Shaw OBE, who’s dean and head of the University of Glasgow’s Adam Smith Business School and one of Scotland’s leaders in entrepreneurship strategy, was previously an associate principal at the University of Strathclyde. Shaw also holds board positions with the Chartered Association of Business Schools, the Small Business Charter, and the Scaleup Institute.
A longstanding senior marketing and communications executive, Jo Forster is the industry lead for the Rose Review, the independent review originally commissioned by the UK Government in 2018 to report on female entrepreneurship in the UK. Forster works with both the public and private sectors across the UK ecosystem to remove barriers for women in entrepreneurship.
Darina Garland is the co-founder and co-CEO of Ooni, the world’s largest pizza oven company. Garland started her career at the Leith Agency in Edinburgh before setting up her first company Suklaa, running projects and events for clients such as the Royal Opera House, TEDx, NESTA, and the Institute for Education. She is also the co-founder of global education festival Oppi.
Mark Logan OBE is the Scottish Government’s chief entrepreneurial adviser, and was a director at Cisco before joining Skyscanner as chief operating officer in 2012. Logan is also a professor at the University of Glasgow’s School of Computing Science, and advises a number of startups and scaleups in Scotland.
Commenting further on the new advisory group, Stewart said: “I’m delighted to have Carolyn, Eleanor, Jo, Darina and Mark on board. Their combined expertise will be invaluable in informing our strategy going forward. While tangible progress has been made, equally there is still so much more work to do.
“We are already developing a number of initiatives, which we will further formalise in the coming weeks and months, one of which will enable companies from across the entire entrepreneurial ecosystem to sign-up to the principles underpinning Pathways through action-led commitments.”
In October last year, the Scottish Government’s cabinet secretary Neil Gray announced £2.9 million in funding for entrepreneurs including women and other priority groups split between two funds.
The Ecosystem Fund provided 42 recipients with £1.6 million, while 20 projects received £1.3 million through the new Pre-Start Pathways Fund — which is helping to develop a pre-start network to bring more people into the entrepreneurship pipeline.
The establishment of a network of pop-up ‘pre-start’ centres across Scotland, a key recommendation of the Stewart Report, is aimed at making it easier for women to access pathways into entrepreneurship.
After a tough business year due to high inflation and a sluggish economy, Scots firms are setting their sights on the areas of business development, staff training, productivity, and recruitment in 2024, new research from the Bank of Scotland has found.
The data revealed that one third (33%)of businesses based in Scotland are aiming to develop their business in the New Year, though while being cognisant of finances: 31% have reported their plans to keep a closer eye on costs over the next 12 months.
In a bid to facilitate the desired growth, almost half (49%) of Scottish businesses are expecting to hire more staff in 2024, while around a third (34%) want to invest more in staff training. What’s more, and to help attract and retain talent, more than a quarter (30%) of firms are also planning on increasing staff wages.
With the expectation that inflation will continue to fall, more than two thirds (68%) of firms are confident that they’ll see their business become more profitable in 2024 compared to 2023.
Concerning turnover, almost two thirds (60%) expect their turnover to increase in the New Year. Of those expecting an increase, around one fifth (21%) anticipate growth of 5 to 10%, while around 23% of firms have eyes on growth of up to 5%.
Commenting on the findings, Martyn Kendrick, the regional director for Scotland at Bank of Scotland commercial banking, said: “Scottish firms are entering the New Year with ambitious growth plans, not only to be more productive but also to invest in their teams and the training that will help them flourish.
“It’s been a challenging year but the recent easing in inflation and stabilisation of interest rates are helping to create an environment where businesses can look ahead more confidently and put measures in place to boost future growth.”
Kendrick continued: “By taking the time to reassess priorities and manage cashflow carefully, businesses will be ready to benefit from new opportunities and to tackle headwinds more effectively in the future.
“Hopefully the New Year will see demand for our world class industries and services continue to improve and help further support growth for Scottish businesses during 2024.”
The company’s latest annual data recap revealed that broadband traffic increased by around 9% across the UK during 2023, to a total of 94,722 Petabytes (PB) in data. One Petabyte equals one million Gigabytes, with a 4K-quality movie drawing on around 7.2 Gigabytes per hour when streamed.
While the UK’s lowest month for broadband data usage was in June, when just shy of 7,300 PBs were used, the numbers were at their highest in December with nearly 9,000 PBs of data being consumed. Across the year, online events and releases — not least Amazon Prime’s coverage of the Premier League, and the release of downloads for gaming titles such as Call of Duty — led to significant peaks in data usage.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the busiest day overall across the Openreach network was Boxing Day. Drivers such as people streaming movies, boxsets, and football matches, setting up and using new devices, and utilising broadband to contact friends and family, contributed to 342 PBs of data being utilised.
The second busiest day of 2023 was the following day, Wednesday 27 December, when 330 PBs of data was consumed. The third busiest, with 319 PBs of data being made use of, was the day after that, Thursday 28 December.
The telecoms firm’s annual recap also shows that, across the whole of last year, the busiest day of the week was usually a Sunday, while the busiest time on the network was normally between 8pm and 9pm.
Trevor Linney, the director of network technology at Openreach, noted that the firm’s numbers on broadband data can provide a holistic view of domestic usage. “The Openreach network is the biggest in the UK, and we carry broadband traffic for hundreds of broadband companies. This gives us the full picture.”
“We believe that our insights are some of the best and most comprehensive available,” he said.
Linney also noted how surges in UK data usage are largely underpinned by online gaming and real-time sports coverage. “We’re seeing a real pattern starting to emerge in these annual reports, with live sports and gaming at the heart of huge jumps in data usage,” he specified.
One of the last occasions DIGIT reported on Openreach and broadband was at the beginning of December 2023, when the company announced a new £50 million investment to bring full fibre to an additional 167,000 homes across Scotland.
The University of Edinburgh and four others organisations have secured contracts to develop lithium technology for fusion energy.
The recipients have received contracts ranging between £700,000 and £1.5 million, totalling £7.4m, from the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority’s (UKAEA) Fusion Industry Programme.
The Fusion Industry Programme challenge, “Realising the potential of lithium in an economic, sustainable and scalable fusion energy fuel-cycle,” was launched in early 2023. It was created to help encourage organisations to create and evaluate prototypes of lithium technology.
The University of Edinburgh’s contract concerns tritium, an atom that can be produced in fusion reactors through contact with lithium. The contract will lead to the development of continuous tritium capture and gaseous release through chemical control.
The other recipients in this latest wave of fusion-focussed contracts include Bangor University, the University of Bristol, the University of Manchester, and the Frazer-Nash Consultancy.
Tim Bestwick, UKAEA’s chief development officer, said: “Fusion energy continues to feature on the world stage, with recent commitments being made at COP28 to develop fusion as a sustainable, low carbon source of energy for future generations.
“The Fusion Industry Programme is encouraging the development of UK industrial fusion capacity and preparing the UK fusion industry for the future global fusion power plant market.
“The organisations that have been awarded these contracts have successfully demonstrated their lithium technology concepts and will now develop them to the ‘proof of concept’ stage.”
The latest contracts follow the award of Fusion Industry Programme contracts earlier in the year. These focussed on digital engineering and fusion fuel requirements, and more recently, materials and manufacturing as well as heating and cooling technologies.
One of the last times DIGIT reported on UKAEA and fusion energy was when the Authority and the Satellite Applications Catapult partnered to demonstrate how robotics technology developed for fusion energy research can be used to provide maintenance for in-orbit satellites.
Considering that climate change is a global issue that can’t be put on pause, we all—businesses included—have a part to play when it comes to environmental sustainability.
In light of this, DIGIT wanted to highlight a few companies in and around the Scottish technology sector that are helping other businesses be more sustainable through their easy-to-facilitate products and services.
These innovative yet accessible solutions are examples of what companies in Scotland and beyond can adopt when beginning their sustainability journey, or when wanting to bolster their current efforts.
They also serve as a useful reminder that while being directly beneficial for the planet and its people, sustainability-focussed products and services such as these can help businesses be better businesses in a more practical sense, not least when it comes to cost savings.
To discover more about the firms, products, and services in question, read on.
Bennu.ai
Based in Edinburgh—and recently named by DIGIT as one of the capital’s most interesting tech startups—Bennu.ai is a developer of smart waste solutions which can reduce both carbon footprint and waste management cost.
Borne out of both a passion for sustainability and a frustration with the progress of global nations regarding climate change, Jonathan Feldstein founded the company in 2021 while studying for a PhD in artificial intelligence. As he told us: “It was clear to me that the only way to solve climate change is to develop solutions that take people with them and make sustainable actions easy and rewarding. As long as sustainable actions are seen as a sacrifice, no (democratic) government will be able to enact lasting and significant enough change.”
While there’s work on other products going on behind the scenes, the startup’s first, flagship product is Janus—a smart waste bin. “It sorts waste automatically and, knowing better than most humans what is and what isn’t recyclable, sorts waste with higher accuracy using AI,” Feldstein explained. “In addition, it removes contaminants in the form of liquids which otherwise reduce the recyclability of the waste.”
To ensure maximum impact, Bennu.ai is currently focussing on working with businesses in locations with high footfall. “Those places have particularly high waste rates, consisting of mainly recyclable waste which currently is poorly recycled,” noted Feldstein.
Virtek Solutions
Hailing from East Kilbride, Virtek Solutions is a business solutions company, with one of its core offerings as a supplier being Epson heat-free printers and photocopiers.
Explaining how they’re more sustainable alternatives, Ryan Mullen, the managing director of Virtek Solutions, said: “The Epson offering is inkjet technology, meaning that unlike traditional laser machines, they have no fuser unit required to heat to over 200 degrees to essentially melt toner onto a page.” Because of this, they can use up to 83% less energy than laser printers, and produce up to 96% fewer used consumables, resulting in energy and money savings for businesses.
One example report, based on a real evaluation of a business, showed that switching to heat-free inkjet printers could save them up to 94.4% in energy savings, and up to £345,000 in financial savings over a 60-month period.
For Mullen, helping businesses to be more sustainable in this accessible way is rewarding. “We believe we could all do that little bit more to be more sustainable,” he said. “And when you consider that, on average this year, we have reduced our own customer base’s CO2 emissions by an average of 91.2% from printers alone—not to mention the cost savings due to this—it feels good to know we are helping do our bit.”
GoCodeGreen, the digital platform and certified B Corp company founded by Eric Zie, has the mission of using technology to help technology become greener. Specifically, through the platform, businesses can measure and baseline the carbon impact of their software, and then identify actions to reduce its carbon impact.
The idea for GoCodeGreen originated in early 2021. “I was building a new digital solution for a UK bank and had an idea that I’d build it as the cleanest software product that the bank had ever seen,” the founder explained to DIGIT.
However, Zie quickly ran into—and was inspired by—a roadblock. “I needed a measurement capability that could accurately assess the carbon impact of software, but couldn’t find one on the market. As a GoogleBrain Award winner with a 25 year career in technology, I decided I would put that experience to use and help in the biggest challenge of our lifetime,” he told us.
Since its inception in May 2021, the startup has worked with over 35 organisations across 65+ of their digital products and identified 56% carbon reduction opportunities in the build stage, and 26% in operate.
“The opportunity to help organisations with the fast track removal of legacy applications, support the business cases for migration to clean cloud environments, as well as further enhance modernised digital applications, makes our capabilities important for all types of businesses at different levels of carbon action maturity,” Zie added.
Moving Forward, Sustainably
Taking sustainability seriously as a business has, over time, become more and more of an imperative—and this is set to continue in light of climate change’s progression.
Hopefully, these three examples of companies with accessible offerings have inspired you with your business’ sustainability efforts and overall approach.
And, as Bennu.ai’s Jonathan Feldstein wisely advised: “Investing in sustainable approaches will pay off, and the sooner these transitions happen, the more payoff.”
Led by engineers and physicists from the University of Glasgow, the research scrutinised the internal and external muscle movements of volunteers as they talked using a range of wireless sensing devices.
The data from 400 minutes of analysis is being made openly available to other researchers in a bid to aid the development of new technologies based on speech recognition.
The future technologies, it’s been suggested, could help people with speech impairments or voice loss by using sensors to read their lips and facial movements and provide them a synthesised voice.
The dataset could also enable voice-controlled devices like smartphones to read users’ lips as they speak silently, enabling silent speech recognition.
Further, it could help improve security for banking by analysing users’ distinctive facial movements before unlocking sensitive information.
To gather the data, the researchers asked 20 volunteers to speak a series of vowel sounds, words, and sentences while scans of their facial movements and recordings of their voices were collected.
The team used two different radar technologies to image the movement of the volunteers’ facial skin as they spoke, along with the movements of their tongue and larynx.
Vibrations on the surface of their skin was scanned via camera and a laser speckle detection system. A separate camera capable of measuring depth read their mouths as they shaped different sounds.
The University of Glasgow researchers collaborated with colleagues at the University of Dundee and University College London to synchronise and compile the dataset. It’s been named “RVTALL” for the radio frequency, visual, text, audio, laser and lip landmark information it contains.
Professor Abbasi, of the University of Glasgow’s James Watt School of Engineering, said: “This type of multi-modal sensing for speech recognition is still a relatively new field of research, and our review of existing public data found that there wasn’t much available to help support future developments.
“What we set out to do in collecting the RVTALL dataset was create a much more complete set of analyses of the visible and invisible processes which create speech to enable new research breakthroughs, and we’re pleased that we’re now able to share it.”
Professor Muhammad Imran, leader of the University of Glasgow’s Communications, Sensing and Imaging group, is a co-author of the paper. He commented: “Contactless sensing has huge potential for improving speech recognition and creating new applications in communications, healthcare and digital security.
“We’re keen to explore in our own research group here at the University of Glasgow how we can build on previous breakthroughs in lip-reading using multi-modal sensors and find new uses everywhere from homes to hospitals.”
The researchers discussed how they conducted their multi-modal analysis of speech formation in the Scientific Data journal.
Funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and the Royal Society of Edinburgh supported the research.
An X-ray AI reporting solution is being trialled in NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde (NHSGGC), with the aim of improving earlier lung cancer detection.
qXR has been developed by healthtech firm Qure.ai, and is being tested in a collaboration between the University of Glasgow, the Scottish Government, and the NHSGGC-hosted West of Scotland Innovation Hub. The solution automatically segregates ‘normal’ chest X-rays and flags abnormalities such as masses or lung nodules.
The RADICAL (Radiograph Accelerated Detection and Identification of Cancer of the Lung) trial is currently underway at the Inverclyde Royal Hospital in Greenock, the Vale of Leven Hospital in Alexandria, and Paisley’s Royal Alexandra Hospital, with the technology being widened to other NHSGGC hospitals in the coming months.
In Scotland, lung cancer is the most common cause of death from cancer. By detecting cancer earlier, from GP-referred chest X-rays in an outpatient hospital setting, the patient pathway to CT scan or treatment planning can be streamlined, potentially saving time, patient outcomes, and quality of life.
Speaking on qXR, professor David Lowe, professor of health innovation at the University of Glasgow and emergency medicine consultant at NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, said: “Worldwide healthcare systems have a significant challenge in the detection of lung cancer.
“At present, 40-50% of patients present with advanced or stage 4 cancer, leading to poorer outcomes. If we can spot cancer earlier, by speeding up the time and accuracy of the 100,000 chest X-rays performed each year at NHSGGC, we can improve time to further imaging, and subsequent treatment. Qure’s chest X-ray AI will help orchestrate benefits for the whole patient care pathway.”
qXR is also being supported by the University of Glasgow’s Digital Health Validation Lab, providing academic leadership and support to deliver the trial alongside NHSGGC and Qure.ai.
Darren Stephens, who’s senior vice-president and commercial head of UK and Europe at Qure.ai, commented: “The reality of healthcare AI is exciting for us all.
“Diagnosing cancer and other disease conditions earlier reduces long-term pressure on the health economy, and also enhances the length and quality of life for patients. We will be closely supporting the NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde team with this deployment.”
Denise Brown, director of digital services at NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, commented further: “AI is ready for adoption into clinical practice within this area of national priority.
“Products such as qXR from Qure.ai will help us to detect lung cancer early, this project will establish reliable evidence of impact and value, and under our Digital Strategy’s ‘Enabled by AI Programme’ is part of our ongoing work in NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde to co-develop and adopt digital solutions that support clinical decision making.”
Shetland-based HyImpulse, a launch company working with SaxaVord Spaceport in Unst, and Forres-headquartered Orbex, a launch company working with Sutherland Spaceport, will receive around £6.7 million between them.
Orbex will get over £3.3 million to undertake activities to ensure its work is environmentally sustainable. This includes installing a green propellant plant to manufacture a clean propane, produced from renewable feedstocks such as plant and vegetable waste material.
Sutherland Spaceport will be Orbex’s ‘long-term’ home, which aims to be the first carbon-neutral spaceport in the world, both in its construction and operation.
Meanwhile, HyImpulse UK will receive nearly £3.4 million to undertake its Hybrid Propulsion Test Programme ahead of the proposed launch of its launch vehicle, SL1, from SaxaVord Spaceport.
By 2030, HyImpulse aims to achieve carbon neutral operations, including the use of synthesised paraffin fuel and using renewable energy sources.
The funding was awarded using UK Space Agency contributions to the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Boost! Programme. The programme aims to help companies develop world-leading space transportation services and bring them to market.
The UK invested £12 million into the Boost! programme in 2019, followed by another £12 million in 2022, one of the largest investments from ESA member states. Previous Boost! contracts were awarded to the companies in 2020 and 2021.
Matt Archer, director of launch at the UK Space Agency, said: “Our investment in both Orbex and HyImpulse demonstrates our continued commitment to make the UK Europe’s leading destination for launch by encouraging the development of launch companies.
“These contracts will help Orbex to develop the launch site at Sutherland Spaceport and HyImpulse to prepare for their first launch from SaxaVord Spaceport, enhancing our launch capability, creating high skilled jobs and supporting the Government’s vision for the UK to be Europe’s most attractive launch destination by 2030.”
Andrew Griffith MP, minister for space at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, also commented: “We want the UK to become Europe’s leading destination for small satellite launches, building on our expertise in satellite design.
“Pioneering innovations like building the world’s most eco-friendly space rocket signal our commitment to being at the forefront of the next generation of space technology, while raising our standing as a leader in space sustainability.
“Our funding alongside further private sector investment will enhance the work of our ambitious space sector while creating highly skilled jobs across the UK that grow our economy.”
The last 12 months have been another rollercoaster in the world of crypto. Few, if any, could have predicted how 2023 would turn out, but – at least from a market perspective – it has been a much more positive period than the previous year.
In the year to date, Bitcoin is up by around 150% whereas, during 2022, it fell by nearly two-thirds – a chastening experience for the many people who joined the crypto ride during the Covid-19 pandemic. And that’s before you even get to the biggest events of 2022: the collapses of Celsius and FTX.
Still, as an industry, crypto can only benefit from these painful but necessary events. Arguably, that is one of the reasons things appear to have turned a corner in 2023.
What might 2024 have in store? As ever, it’s almost impossible to say – but you can say it will more than likely be as unpredictable as the last few years. There are, nonetheless, some events we can speculate on.
The ‘Halvening’
As we all know, the Bitcoin ‘halvening’ – when the rewards provided to miners is cut in half – will happen in April. Despite the fact that it shouldn’t really make any difference, and has been known about for years, it might increase the price. Past performance is, of course, no guide to future returns, but history indicates the value of Bitcoin tends to rise ahead of the big event, as investors respond to greater scarcity.
Central Bank Digital Currencies
With a few already in circulation, I expect more central authorities will start to roll out CBDCs – central bank digital currencies. In particular, they will start to put the shackles on the ones they want, ensuring they can pull the requisite levers as and when they need to.
I’ve argued elsewhere these could be a very positive development for the likes of monetary stimulus. But, they are centralised cryptos, not decentralised like most of the ones we are all familiar with. For purists, that may be reason enough not to use them.
Regulation
We are already beginning to see regulators flex their muscles in the crypto world, but expect to see more regulations implemented worldwide over the next 12 months.
In my view, this is a positive development from crypto, strengthening the general public’s trust in some – rightly, not all – tokens. There will inevitably still be scams in any realm of finance, but proper regulation should help challenge many people’s lingering perceptions about it being ‘the Wild West’.
FTX’s Aftermath
The collapse of FTX has cast a long shadow – and it is all still being worked through. The supervisors of the exchange’s liquidation have been given permission to sell a basket of cryptos, and to distribute the proceeds to creditors.
It is still not clear who these particular cryptos belong to – and it may never be clear – but, unfortunately, I suspect the total payout will be below 25% when all is said and done.
Exchange-traded Funds
There is great excitement all round about the prospect of Bitcoin, or other crypto-related, ETFs. In theory, there will be a ruling between 5th and 10th January on whether they will be allowed by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
I’m not yet convinced they will be given the go ahead. If ETFs don’t get the rubber stamp of approval, I would anticipate the market reacting badly.
Adoption
Adoption of crypto is still charging ahead and I expect that to continue during 2024. The problem is there are still very few cases where crypto outclasses fiat. XRP, being a bank-to-bank transfer token, may well do better than others. But that depends on the final outcome of the court cases with which it is involved.
And, as I always say, the regulator can change the rules anytime to suit itself.
Disclaimer:
The information provided in this article is for informational purposes only and should not be considered as financial or investment advice. Cryptocurrency investments are subject to market risks, and past performance is not indicative of future results.
Readers are encouraged to conduct their own research and consult with financial advisors before making any investment decisions. The author and the publication do not assume any responsibility for financial losses or damages resulting from the use of the information provided herein.
Cryptocurrency markets are highly volatile, and prices can fluctuate significantly. Always be aware of the potential risks associated with trading or investing in cryptocurrencies and be prepared to bear the consequences.
Additionally, regulations and legal frameworks related to cryptocurrencies vary by jurisdiction. Readers should be aware of and comply with local laws and regulations concerning cryptocurrencies and related activities.
The data breach happened over two years ago, on 20 September 2021, when the MoD sent a bulk email to a list of Afghan nationals eligible for evacuation. However, when sending the correspondence, the “To” field was used, resulting in the personal information of 245 people being inadvertently disclosed.
Recipients could not only see others’ email addresses, but 55 people also had thumbnail photos for their email accounts. Further, two individuals replied using the “Reply to All” function, with one of them providing their geographical location.
The email was sent by the team in charge of the UK’s Afghan Relocations and Assistant Policy (ARAP), whose responsibility is for assisting with the relocation of Afghan nationals who worked for or with the UK Government. The ICO said that if the data had been obtained by the Taliban, it “could have resulted in a threat to life.”
Soon after the breach, the MoD contacted the affected individuals, asking them to delete the email, change email addresses, and inform ARAP of their new details via a secure form. An internal investigation was also conducted, alongside a statement made in Parliament.
The internal investigation found two similar data breaches had taken place—one on 7 September 2021 involving 13 individual email addresses, and another on 13 September 2021 involving 55 individual email addresses. In total, 265 unique emails were involved in the three breaches, as in some instances the same email address was involved.
The incidents have since led to the updating of ARAP’s email policies and processes, and the implementation of a “second pair of eyes” policy to double-check when sending emails to external groups of people.
The fine for the 20 September 2021 breach was reduced from its starting point of £1 million to £700,000, due the action the MoD had subsequently taken and in light of the challenges the ARAP team faced. It was further reduced to £350,000 under the ICO’s public sector approach, which serves as a deterrent to public sector departments, organisations, and groups.
Speaking on the fine and the ICO’s decision-making, John Edwards, the information commissioner, said: “This deeply regrettable data breach let down those to whom our country owes so much. This was a particularly egregious breach of the obligation of security owed to these people, thus warranting the financial penalty my office imposes today.
“While the situation on the ground in the summer of 2021 was very challenging and decisions were being made at pace, that is no excuse for not protecting people’s information who were vulnerable to reprisal and at risk of serious harm. When the level of risk and harm to people heightens, so must the response.
“I welcome the MoD’s remedial steps taken and its collaboration with my office to ensure its bulk email policies and processes are improved so such errors are not repeated.
“By issuing this fine and sharing the lessons from this breach, I want to make clear to all organisations that there is no substitute for being prepared. As we have seen here, the consequences of data breaches could be life-threatening. My office will continue to act where we find poor compliance with the law that puts people at risk of harm.”
According to new research from Dynatrace, the tech company and provider of a software observability platform, 83% of global technology leaders say that AI has become mandatory to keep up with the dynamic nature of cloud environments.
This is just one of the insights gleaned from a survey of 1,300 CTOs, CIOs, and other leaders involved in IT operations and DevOps management in large organisations. The sample included 600 respondents in Europe, 250 in Asia Pacific, 200 in the US, 150 in the Middle East, and 100 in Latin America.
Regarding the headline statistic, over eight-in-ten (83%) said that artificial intelligence has now become mandatory to make it more possible for teams to manually keep up with the size, speed, and dynamic nature of cloud environments. Relatedly, a similar number (88%) also think AI will enable cloud cost efficiencies by supporting FinOps practices.
In other areas, around four-fifths (82%) of technology leaders said artificial intelligence will be critical to security threat detection, investigation, and response. What’s more, a further 88% expect AI to extend access to data analytics to non-technical employees through natural language queries.
Despite these business advantages, technology leaders aren’t without AI-related anxieties. For instance, more than nine-in-ten (93%) are concerned that artificial intelligence could be used for non-approved uses as employees become more accustomed with using tools such as ChatGPT.
A slightly higher percent (98%) are apprehensive that generative AI could be susceptible to intentional bias, error, and misinformation. Further, 95% are concerned that using generative to create code could result in leakage and improper or illegal use of intellectual property.
That said, and in a bid to keep pace with competitors, technology leaders are still moving forward with artificial intelligence. Just under two-thirds (61%) will increase investment in AI over the next 12 months to speed up development through automatic code generation. Additionally, 62% of organisations have already changed the job roles and skills they are recruiting for because of AI.
Speaking on the findings and artificial intelligence’s rise in usage, Bernd Greifeneder, chief technology officer at Dynatrace, said: “AI has become central to how organizations drive efficiency, improve productivity, and accelerate innovation.”
“The release of ChatGPT late last year triggered a significant generative AI hype cycle. Business, development, operations, and security leaders have set high expectations for generative AIs to help them deliver new services with less effort and at record speeds.
“However, as organizations endeavor to realize the expected value, it becomes evident that generative AI requires domain-specific tuning and integration with other technologies, including other types of AI. In addition, organizations must use AI securely and responsibly and monitor it closely to manage cost and user experience.
“This will help them provide accurate results, reduce expenses, and prevent employees from exposing sensitive data or creating vulnerabilities in their environments.”
Resillion, the engineering and cybersecurity services firm, has appointed Yaron Kottler as its new executive chairman.
Yaron brings 20 years of industry expertise, most notably as a co-founder of quality engineering giant Qualitest. There, he was instrumental in developing and delivering a global growth strategy, including targeted acquisitions and development of strategic alliances.
Resillion, which started life as Edge Testing Solutions in Strathclyde Business Park, was bought by French business group Eurofins in 2018 and has since broken away. In addition to its global locations it has two Scottish offices, on West Nile Street in Glasgow and Mitchell Street in Edinburgh. UK managing director of Resillion, Sharon Hamilton, is also based in Scotland.
Along with his quality engineering expertise, Yaron was involved in several private equity transactions, both within Qualitest and other quality engineering companies. He also serves as a board advisor to several early-stage techstartups across industries including media, healthcare, and in the connected devices space.
Yaron commented: “In an IT services environment where it is often hard to differentiate, Resillion offers a unique set of capabilities across software, hardware, content and compliance. Along with real potential for industry disruption, this is what motivated my decision to join this dynamic company.”
Previous CEO, Dik Vos, will sit on the board as a non-executive director, collaborating with investors Stirling Square Capital Partners, a pan-European partner to mid-market businesses.
Julien Horreard, partner at Stirling Square Capital Partners, added: “Yaron’s vision for the business, fresh thinking, tenacity and passion brings significant benefits to Resillion’s clients.
“Through his business skills, unmatched expertise within quality engineering and ability to scale a company, we are confident in his international growth plans, and ability to attract and retain the very best talent.”
A new innovation hub within the Advanced Manufacturing Innovation District Scotland is being established by the University of Strathclyde to aid the development and deployment of technology supporting decarbonisation.
An agreement with Rolls-Royce will see Strathclyde develop the new facility within the company’s plant in Inchinnan, Renfrewshire, enabling the university to scale-up its collaborative activities with industry partners across sectors like heat, transport, and power electronics.
The facility will see Strathclyde locate equipment and capabilities from its Power Networks Demonstration Centre (PNDC)—an integrated development, manufacture, and test facility—that will help to accelerate and de-risk large-scale decarbonisation technologies and products.
The site will be equipped to include testing of technology specifically designed to support the energy transition. This includes the provision of a hydrogen supply that can support the decarbonisation of the aerospace, rail, and heavy-duty vehicle markets, and the development of hydrogen as a fuel for domestic heating and industrial energy.
Professor Sir Jim McDonald, principal and vice-chancellor of the University of Strathclyde, said: “This facility will combine a unique set of engineering, technology, development and test capabilities that will help to establish the supply chain and supporting ecosystem for decarbonisation while building upon existing skills and infrastructure in the region.
“It will be a major addition to the Advanced Manufacturing Innovation District Scotland that brings together our capabilities in electrical systems, power electronics and advanced manufacturing to support new jobs, economic growth and position Scotland and the UK at the forefront of decarbonised transport and heat.”
The new facility will also build on the Power Electronics, Machines and Drives (PEMD) hardware focus in the Rolls-Royce University Technology Centre (UTC), which is based at Strathclyde’s Technology & Innovation Centre.
Gordon Hutchieson, manufacturing executive at Rolls-Royce, also said: “We are pleased to sign this agreement, ensuring that this part of our site will continue to be an important resource for advanced engineering and the advancement of net zero solutions.”
The University of Strathclyde operates one of the largest energy research clusters in Europe, and received a Queen’s Anniversary Prize award in 2019 in recognition of its research in this field.
Its specialisms cover: wind energy technology and its deployment, renewable energy, smart grids and power grid control, and artificial intelligence and data analytics for energy systems, among others.
A study led by a University of Stirling researcher has looked into how artificial intelligence large language models (LLMs) can improve software for reliability and speed.
Leading the research was Dr Sandy Brownlee, a senior lecturer in the University of Stirling’s Computing Science and Mathematics Division. The team used ChatGPT to automatically update open source software by asking it to make improvements to the code.
“We found that, on the open source project we used as a case study, a LLM was able to produce faster versions of the programme around 15% of the time,” said Brownlee, “which is half as good again as the previous approach.”
“Most interestingly was that the LLM was able to take examples from other parts of the programme that we hadn’t explicitly told it about in order to make these improvements,” Brownlee continued.
The results of the research could be used to improve mobile apps in particular, making them more responsive and less battery intensive on smart phone batteries.
“The most tangible benefit is in your pocket — mobile apps that run more efficiently mean that your battery lasts longer, and the apps will be more responsive when in use,” Brownlee explained.
Software has become increasingly complex, difficult to maintain, and time-consuming for developers to improve. It is also having a growing environmental impact as computers consume more and more energy.
“There is a trade-off here because LLMs cost a lot of energy to make and use,” said Brownlee, “but if they can be used to improve a piece of software that is run many times, the payoff may be worth it.”
Brownlee hopes that the research could help software developers who are working to create more efficient programmes.
“The nature of software developers’ roles will change if automated improvement to software becomes commonplace, moving to a higher level of design, though that is continuing the direction of travel we’ve seen for decades,” he said.
A peer-reviewed paper on the study, Enhancing Genetic Improvement Mutations Using Large Language Models, was presented by Brownlee last Friday in San Francisco, at the Symposium on Search Based Software Engineering 2023.
Brownlee led the research and collaborated with Professor Justyna Petke, Professor Federica Sarro and PhD students James Callan and Carol Hanna, all of University College London; Dr Dominik Sobania and PhD student Alina Geiger of Johannes Gutenberg University; and Dr Karine Even-Mendoza of King’s College London.
The study was supported by funding from an Engineering and Physical Science Research grant via UK Research and Innovation, and the European Research Council advanced fellowship grant.
According to the latest Royal Bank of Scotland Report on Jobs, there was a renewed rise in hiring activity across Scotland in November.
The Report on Jobs is based on a monthly survey of around 70 recruitment and employment consultants, providing an up-to-date view of Scottish labour market trends.
The data for last month showed that there were mild expansions for both permanent placements and temp billings, amid reports of successful recruitment campaigns and the commencement of projects with clients.
In terms of labour supply, and while permanent staff availability fell due to increased hesitancy given the economic climate, temp candidate availability expanded for the second month running, in part due to redundancies.
Meanwhile, overall pay pressures remained strong, with employers raising starting salaries and wages to attract suitable workers as skill shortages continue.
Permanent Placements Rise
Following three consecutive months of decline, recruiters in Scotland pointed to a renewed rise in permanent staff appointments in November. While the rate of growth was modest, it still contrasted with a steep downturn at the UK level.
Temporary staff billings rose slightly across Scotland too, with the upturn ending a 13-month period of decline. A fresh contraction in temp billings was recorded across the UK as a whole.
Permanent Staff Availability Falls
The availability of candidates to fill permanent vacancies in Scotland decreased further last month, extending the current sequence of decline which started in February 2021. Meanwhile, permanent staff supply expanded further at the UK level, and at a rate which was the most pronounced since December 2020.
Scottish recruiters recorded an expansion of temp candidate supply in November, which rose for the first time in over two-and-a-half-years in October. Redundancies were linked by some respondents to the latest expansion of short-term worker supply. The rate of growth in this area was slower in Scotland than the UK-wide trend.
Average Starting Salaries Rise
A steep rise in permanent starting salaries was also recorded, extending the current run of salary growth to three years. Recruiters noted businesses were willing to pay higher salaries to attract the right talent as shortages in key skills remain. Scottish starting salaries increased at a quicker pace than seen across the UK for the sixth month running.
The current period of temp pay growth was also stretched to three years in November.
Permanent Vacancies Fall
Demand for permanent staff fell for the fourth month running in November. The rate of contraction was the strongest in three years, with the downturn in demand for permanent workers in Scotland steeper than that seen at the UK level.
A fourth consecutive monthly deterioration in demand for temporary staff was also recorded. The pace of contraction was sharp, though it eased in October, and despite the fact that temp vacancies expanded modestly across the UK as a whole.
Speaking on the findings for November, Sebastian Burnside, chief economist at Royal Bank of Scotland, commented: “Recruitment activity across Scotland improved slightly in the penultimate month of 2023.
“Successful recruitment drives and the commencement of projects at clients supported increases in both permanent placements and temp billings during the penultimate month. The fresh and broad-based upturn in hiring contrasted with a downturn across the UK as whole, with permanent staff recruitment particularly weak at the UK level. It is difficult to know whether the increases can be sustained in December and into the coming year, however, given the fall in overall vacancies.
“In terms of pay, a lack of suitably-skilled candidates often led employers to bump up their pay offers to attract the right talent, making it a good time for job seekers if they wish to secure a better paid role.”
Professor Bill Buchanan OBE, the cryptography and cybersecurity academic teaching at Edinburgh Napier University, has been named Most Innovative Teacher of the Year at the 2023 Times Higher Education (THE) Awards.
The Times Higher Education awards are recognised as the “Oscars of higher education” and its judges praised Buchanan on his curriculum, rapport with students, his dynamic external speakers, and the promotion of cybersecurity literacy beyond higher education.
The award is but the latest accolade for the Scottish professor. Buchanan was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2017 for his services to cybersecurity. He’s also a fellow of the British Computer Society (BCS), a principal fellow of the Higher Education Academy (HEA), and has won multiple student-voted awards for teaching excellence.
Buchanan is a regular speaker at DIGIT conferences, with attendees having the opportunity to witness his engaging approach to speaking and teaching first-hand. Most recently, in September, Buchanan presented on the threats and opportunities of quantum computing at the Scot-Secure West event in Glasgow.
Speaking on the award win, Buchanan said: “The past year or so has been amazing – with such great students who have been so eager to learn.
“In fact, it has been great fun, and I have loved every minute of it.
“There are few better jobs in the world than the privilege of being a teacher to great students – and in having the opportunity to teach and do research on the topics I love.”
The Principal and Vice Chancellor of Edinburgh Napier University, Professor Andrea Nolan, remarked: “This award is a recognition of Bill’s ability to take complex areas of cryptography and teach them in an engaging and practical way.
“His commitment to helping future generations build rewarding careers in computing and cybersecurity is a source of pride for the University.
“I warmly congratulate him on this honour and have no doubt he will continue to find more innovative ways of inspiring students in the years to come.”
The Edinburgh Napier University project also won the Cisco Future Tech Award at the Converge Awards earlier this year.
It is led by the University’s Dr Zakwan Jaroucheh, as well as Nanik Ramchandani, and aims to test its technology with pilot customers before taking the product to market.
As well as Buchanan, the company is supported by Dr Cathy Higginson, Business Development and Relationship Manager at the University’s Research, Innovation and Enterprise department.
The Medical Device Manufacturing Centre (MDMC) has been awarded £3.35 million in additional funding to continue developing medical device innovation and improve industry sustainability.
The MDMC is a consortium of Scottish universities, including Heriot-Watt University—where it’s headquartered—as well as the University of Edinburgh, University of Glasgow, Robert Gordon University, and the University of Dundee.
The Centre provides medical device developers and manufacturers with advice, technical expertise, and the necessary facilities to help translate medical device concepts into commercial products.
The new funding, which was supplied by Scottish Enterprise, was announced by the Scottish Government’s cabinet secretary for the wellbeing economy, fair work, and energy, Neil Gray, who was given a tour of the facility this week.
The money will be used to help address current challenges facing organisations like the NHS, exploring the inclusion and development of degradable or reusable polymers. Designed to have reduced environmental impact, use of these polymers could help to make medical device manufacturing more sustainable.
More work will also be done on the real-time evaluation on the carbon footprint of manufacturing processes, and the safer removal of greenhouse gases in the NHS.
Additionally, further support will be be given to earlier-stage entrepreneurs in healthcare who are a part of Scottish Enterprise’s High Growth Spinout Programme, a step towards closer integration of innovation in the health and care sectors.
The wellbeing economy secretary himself remarked: “This funding will not only drive innovation across the healthcare landscape, but help produce more sustainable medical devices as we continue our transition to net zero.
“Having previously supported the MDMC through the Scottish Government’s Advancing Manufacturing Challenge Fund, it is fantastic to see these state-of-the-art facilities continuing to encourage collaborative working.
“Innovation is a priority, and the National Innovation Strategy sets out plans to drive up our performance and compete with the best in the world over the next decade.”
Professor Marc Desmulliez, manager of the MDMC, also commented: “This significant funding from Scottish Enterprise will enable us to continue to support and elevate Scottish medical device innovation, creating new and ground-breaking medical devices with global impact.
“Scotland is brimming with entrepreneurs, but they need access to the right resources, facilities, and expertise at the right time to bring their products to market and benefit patient care.
“We believe that companies are unable to fully realize the potential value of their medical device technologies due to the high costs and limited access associated with conducting clinical investigations, consulting health economists, and utilizing cadaver models.
“This next growth phase for the MDMC will further accelerate Scotland’s offering in this crucial sector, maintaining our world-leading stance in the field of medical device creation with a renewed focus on sustainability and environmentally sensitive manufacturing techniques.”
Since it was launched in April 2020, more than 150 SME medical device businesses in Scotland have worked with the MDMC.
Companies include Intellipalp, which is working to take its prostate cancer diagnostic device from concept to prototype, and ConfiPlus, which has been supported to take its stoma bag accompaniment that tackles leaks through the first steps towards NHS accreditation.
The MDMC can save clients up to eight months of development time, and also supports them in securing necessary investment.
Lindsay Methven, head of major programme management at Scottish Enterprise, added: “This latest award of £3.35 million from Scottish Enterprise takes our total project funding to almost £5 million and demonstrates our ambitions for MDMC and its role in transforming Scotland’s economy by helping to grow the number of entrepreneurs building stronger, scalable innovative medical technologies businesses.
“Integrating MDMC support with our Scottish Enterprise entrepreneurial services means a more seamless approach for companies to help them significantly scale up their operations and accelerate their growth journey, regardless of whether that’s launching a fundraising round, bringing innovative products to domestic or international markets, securing a first major contract, or developing or reshoring manufacturing facilities to produce their devices.”
The membership and cluster management organisation for Scotland’s digitaltechnologies industry, ScotlandIS, has today launched its 16th annual industry survey and is seeking input from respondents across the nation.
The survey provides an annual health check for the industry, setting a benchmark for the comparison of sector successes and challenges from year-to-year. It also provides ScotlandIS members and non-members the opportunity to highlight future issues they foresee affecting the industry.
Among the key findings from last year’s survey, it was discovered that the proportion of Scots businesses recording turnover higher than £1 million increased from 22% in 2022 to 37% in 2023, and companies reported seeing the greatest opportunities for their business in cybersecurity (46%), followed by data analytics (45%), and artificial intelligence (43%).
Having first launched in 2008, the report was originally designed to fill a gap as there were limited figures available relating to the overall health, growth, and development of the Scottish tech industry. Since then, both the report and the sector have grown significantly with the 2023 version putting the value of the Scottish digital sector’s economic contribution at £6 billion.
The results of this year’s survey will contribute to the organisation’s 2024 industry survey report into the health of the sector and the challenges facing Scottish tech firms. Last year, representatives from more than 150 organisations contributed to the report.
CEO of ScotlandIS, Karen Meechan, said: “The tech sector in Scotland has consistently provided a source of great economic optimism, but it’s important that we continue to chart the mood of the industry – particularly as we close out the year. Knowing what issues are causing concern, but also where there could be opportunities, is vital if we are to continue growing our presence on both the UK and global stages.
“It’s fair to say that the last 12 months have provided some significant challenges for our members, as economic and geopolitical factors have made for one of the most complex business landscapes we’ve seen for a long time. However, despite this, we’ve still seen some real success stories from across the sector, and the feedback we get remains roundly positive.
“Our industry report provides an important benchmark opportunity and helps us to understand where we are and how we’re doing compared to previous years. Crucially, it also shows us where ScotlandIS could be doing more to help. For example, we know there is still a skills challenge and we’ve been working to ensure we are creating a talent pipeline for now and the future, through initiatives such as our e-Placement Scotland and Digital Critical Friends programmes.”
Members of the ScotlandIS executive team also visited Bahrain this week where they attended the Arab International Cyber Conference.
“We’ve had an incredibly productive couple of days in Bahrain and it’s clear there are lots of opportunities in the Middle East for Scottish tech firms,” said Meechan. “All of the Scottish companies who were in Bahrain with us found real value and it’s great to see that there is alignment in some of our priority areas, including cyber, fintech, health tech and education.
“We’ll be following up on the connections we’ve made with a view to cultivating new markets and business opportunities for our members.”
CBI Scotland, the trade organisation which represents the nation’s businesses, has urged the government to use the upcoming Scottish Budget to ramp-up business investment and confidence.
Against a backdrop of high costs, low demand, and sluggish productivity, the trade organisation has used its annual budget submission, which sets out its key requests of ministers in Holyrood, to advocate for a series of alleviative measures.
When it comes to creating a business environment that’d enable Scotland to better compete both with its neighbours and on the world stage, the group advocated for the publishing of a long-term tax strategy that will attract people to live and work in Scotland, and the freezing of the business rate multiplier for another year due to inflation.
Further, the trade group wants the government to reinstate a level-playing field by bringing the Higher Property Rate/Large Business Supplement in line with the rest of the UK.
CBI Scotland also called for the development of a skilled workforce that’s ready to meet the needs of the modern economy, and the reforming of planning processes and expediting major net-zero opportunities.
On these fronts, actions such as embedding net-zero and digitalskills in the education system, and reforming planning processes for local and major green infrastructure projects to provide opportunities for meaningful input from business to unlock and accelerate investment, were suggested.
The Scottish Budget is due to be published less than two weeks’ time, on 19 December.
Speaking on the budget, director of CBI Scotland, Tracy Black, remarked: “Against a tough economic backdrop for everyone, the Scottish Budget marks an important moment for the Scottish Government to outline its ambitions for growth.
“With business investment now critical to putting Scotland back on a sustainable economic path, we urgently need firms to unleash investment, not try to tough out the difficult months ahead.
“Access to skills, restrictive planning processes and uncompetitive tax policies are acting as a handbrake on growth, and firms need to see that the Scottish Government is committed to meeting these challenges head on.
“Delivering on a manifesto commitment to bring the large business supplement into line with the rest of the UK and mirroring rates reliefs offered by the Chancellor in the Autumn Statement are vital first steps on the journey.
“Seizing the huge economic opportunities available to Scotland means doing more than the bare minimum. We should be more ambitious on business rates, by offering a full freeze across the economy, and committing to rip-up the planning red tape that delays critical green energy and infrastructure projects from getting off the ground.
“It also means taking a clear-eyed look at the education and skills system to make sure it’s delivering the skills we need for a modern, digital economy.”
In partnership with the University of Strathclyde and University of Glasgow, FRIL will deliver a wide-ranging research agenda, led by—and actionable for—the financial sector, to help advance understanding and adoption of new and emerging technologies.
As well as integrating academic research with an industry-relevant agenda, the Financial Regulation Innovation Lab will engage participants in industry-led innovation challenge calls, design and implement a skills and education programme, and facilitate knowledge exchange through workshops, roundtables, conferences, and trade missions.
Funded by the Glasgow City Region Innovation Accelerator programme, FRIL will work with industry participants including large established financial institutions, the fintech community, academics, voluntary organisations, and regulators across the UK.
The research will cover various aspects of financial regulation, including the following areas:
Explainable AI applications for environmental, social, and governance (ESG) risk management.
Simplifying ESG regulation compliance through explainable intelligent automation.
Using automation and AI to combat money laundering.
Synthetic data for financial regulation innovation.
Generative AI for improved ESG reporting and monitoring in financial services.
The first four industry-led innovation calls to be issued in conjunction with the Lab will cover:
AI and compliance: Utilising emerging technologies to simplify compliance process and monitoring.
Financial Crime: Addressing future challenges of financial crime.
ESG: Meeting new regulatory requirements, leveraging new data and new technologies.
FRIL’s output regarding collaboration and knowledge exchange will include white papers, podcasts, newsletters, blogs, and also a series of events including roundtables, conferences, and trade missions.
The Financial Regulation Innovation Lab is one of the strategic recommendations laid out in the FinTech Research & Innovation Roadmap, published in March 2022. It also aligns with the recently announced UK innovation initiative, the Centre for Finance, Innovation and Technology (CFIT), formed in response to the HM Treasury FinTech Sector Review.
“FinTech Scotland is uniquely positioned within the Scottish fintech industry to lead such an initiative as it will work to inspire collaborators across Scotland, the UK and globally, enabling those around the world to see Glasgow’s financial services capabilities,” said Nicola Anderson, CEO of FinTech Scotland.
“Bringing the fintech community of industry, academics and regulators together to explore, test and experiment with new technologies is an important part of our mission.”
Professor David Hillier, associate principal and executive dean of the University of Strathclyde Business School, also commented: “The University of Strathclyde is delighted to partner with Fintech Scotland and the University of Glasgow to deliver this critical initiative.
“We have significant capabilities across the university in emerging technologies including AI, space and quantum, which we look forward to leveraging through FRIL. We look forward to continuing our work with industry, policy makers, regulators and innovative SMEs to drive actionable solutions and deliver on FRIL’s ambitious agenda.”
Professor Eleanor Shaw, head of the Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow, remarked: “The Adam Smith Business School is very pleased to be a founding partner alongside our colleagues in FinTech Scotland and the University of Strathclyde to deliver FRIL.
“The opportunity to transform the regulatory landscape is remarkable and we are excited to work with partners across all sectors to deliver a collaborative centre of excellence for cutting edge developments in financial regulation.”
Stephen Ingledew OBE, chair of FinTech Scotland, further added: “Once more, FinTech Scotland is taking proactive measures to showcase the effectiveness of how a cluster approach can accelerate the UK’s ability to seize competitive advantage in the future of financial regulation and fintech innovation.
“FRIL will allow us to continue to endorse the opportunity from the fintech sector to support growth across the UK economy.”
The UK Government’s Cyber Explorers Cup, launched today, gives pupils between 11 and 14 years the opportunity to compete in cybersecurity challenges, improving their securityskills and providing them with the chance to win tech-related prizes.
More than 60,000 students from 2,500 schools across the country have already signed up to Cyber Explorers — a free learning platform provided by the UK Government that introduces P7, S1, and S2 students in Scotland, Years 8, 9, and 10 in Northern Ireland, and Key Stage 3 pupils in England and Wales to important cybersecurity concepts. These include digital forensics, encryption, secure communication, the Computer Misuse Act, and network security.
The Cyber Explorers Cup competition is open to all schools, including home schools, and involves teams of up to four students per school completing a series of missions based on a ‘Capture the Flag’ format during the hour-long competition.
The highest scoring school in each UK nation will be awarded with tech rewards, such as vouchers for new IT equipment, as well as learning materials to help students further build their skills. The competition will run until March 2024.
The Cyber Explorers platform itself was launched in February 2022 to give pupils the foundational knowledge to pursue subjects such as computer science, and inspire them to consider a future career in tech.
Speaking on the competition and the Cyber Explorers platform, science and technology secretary Michelle Donelan said: “As the pace of technological change picks up, it is more important than ever to harness the enthusiasm of future generations, inspired by the prospect of exciting careers in cybersecurity that keep us safe. The Cyber Explorers Cup will help us do exactly that.
“I want Cyber Explorers to create new opportunities for thousands of young people to gain the crucial knowledge in cyber security, digital tech and computing we need to bolster our growing cyber sector and make the UK a technology superpower.
“With exciting activities and expert insight on offer to help build those valuable skills, I encourage teachers across our country to take on the challenge.”
The Cyber Explorers Cup is but one of the initiatives from the UK Government to help with the cybersecurity skills pipeline, with the Upskill in Cyber retraining scheme being another.
The government’s own Cyber security skills in the UK labour market 2023 report from earlier this year found that 50% of businesses don’t have the staff to carry out basic tasks laid out in the National Cyber Security Centre’s Cyber Essentials scheme, and that the demand for cybersecurity professionals has continued to increase year-on-year.
New AI-based technology developed by MI:RNA, a veterinary diagnostics company and spinout from Scotland’s Rural College, helps dogs and cats with heart disease live up to 18 months longer.
MI:RNA’s diagnostic testing technology has 85% sensitivity and 83% accuracy for spotting common heart diseases, such as mitral valve disease (MMVD). Current standards of testing miss early signs of heart disease in up to 9 out of 10 cases.
The company’s NEMO Cardiac Health Screening test detects heart disease earlier in dogs and cats by analysing microRNAs—newly discovered biomarkers involved in disease progression and resolution. When combined with AI, this approach significantly improves early identification of conditions like MMVD.
MMVD can lead to heart failure. Early cases are often missed as they have no pronounced symptoms and this preclinical phase can last months or even years.
By identifying MMVD earlier, MI:RNA’s microRNA profiling and AI algorithms can help vets diagnose and monitor disease progression more effectively and assist pet owners and breeders in directing health care.
The spinout’s new technology is also applicable for early detection of other pet diseases, including epilepsy, kidney disease, intestinal diseases, and cancer.
Eve Hanks is the founder and CEO of MI:RNA. She said: “MMVD is the most common cardiovascular disease in canines and it is estimated that 10% of all dogs seen in primary care veterinary practices have some form of heart disease. In older dogs the prevalence can be as high as 60%.
“It’s clear then that there is a need for additional reliable tools to diagnose and correctly stage MMVD in dogs, by using approaches like the application of microRNA profiling, backed by powerful AI algorithms.
“The use of precision medicine in veterinary diagnostics will help pet owners and breeders alike to ascertain where to direct their efforts and finances accordingly. There is massive potential to use this technology to help breeds who have real problems with heart disease and other diseases and will consequently help owners and breeders to identify affected animals more quickly.”
Technology heavyweights such as IBM and Meta have joined forces to found a new industry group focussed on open source artificial intelligence work, known as the “AI Alliance.”
The coalition, which has launched today, aims to bring together organisations across industry, research, education, and government to support open innovation in artificial intelligence amid its rapid development.
The AI Alliance plans to start or improve projects through a series of actions. These include advancing open foundation models with diverse modalities, deploying benchmarks and evaluation tools for AI’s responsible development, and hosting events which highlight how open AI technology is being used for good.
While the open sourcing of artificial intelligence is an objective for numerous companies, people, and projects, the AI Alliance believes that “more collaboration and information sharing will help the community innovate faster and more inclusively.”
The AI Alliance’s founding members—of which there are over 50—include the likes of Intel, AMD, Dell Technologies, Oracle, CERN, the Linux Foundation, Harvard University, Imperial College London, and more.
The group is set to begin its work by creating member-driven working groups across its areas of focus, as well as establishing a governing board and technical oversight committee.
Speaking on open source, AI, and the new coalition, Lisa Su, the CEO and chair of AMD, remarked: “The history of our industry highlights how open, standards-based development leveraging the capabilities of the entire industry both accelerate innovation and ensure technology advances have the largest positive impact.
“By embracing open standards and transparency across all aspects of the rapidly developing AI ecosystem, we can help ensure the transformational benefits of responsible AI are broadly available.
“We are proud to join with other industry leaders as a founding member of the AI Alliance and look forward to working together to ensure the rapid advances in AI are a force for positive change.”
Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, commented further: “The AI Alliance is another milestone in the process of providing for openly shareable software, data, and other assets essential to the development of transparent, advanced and trustworthy AI.
“Open collaborative processes and open governance are essential to these efforts and working with our PyTorch Foundation, LF AI and Data Foundation, Cloud Native Computing Foundation, we look forward to participating in and assisting the Alliance by providing a neutral home for essential elements of the AI ecosystem.”
According to a new study led by the University of Glasgow, people who interact with social robots disclosed more about themselves over time and reported feeling less lonely. Further, the research found that interacting with a social robot improved people’s moods over time.
The study, which was recently published in the International Journal of Social Robotics, took place online during the peak of the pandemic, where people spoke to social robot “Pepper” over Zoom video chats ten times over five weeks. It aimed to examine the effects of long-term use of social robots, as well as peoples’ self-disclosure with them.
The research uncovered that people disclosed more to the robot over time, speaking for longer durations and sharing more information in the process. People also perceived the robot to be more social and competent as time progressed, with the robot’s responses being seen as increasingly comforting. This led to mood improvements and reduction in feelings of loneliness in the participants, which involved 39 people from across the UK.
Secondary data analysis from the same study revealed that individuals experiencing ‘negative’ emotions—stress, low mood, loneliness—as well as introverted individuals and those who perceive the robot as comforting, are more likely to open up and share more with robots.
Professor Emily Cross, an honorary professor at the University of Glasgow and a professor at the ETH Zurich university, remarked: “We’re really excited by the findings of our new study, which sets the stage for using social robots as conversation partners in future. While interactions with social robots are novel and exciting for many people, we were unsure to what extent people’s engagement with them could be sustained over time.
“The results of our study suggest there are contexts in which people are willing to engage with these robots long-term, and social robots could be used as a tool to allow people to talk about themselves, to help support people’s emotional health.”
Dr Guy Laban, who’s an affiliated research associate at the University of Glasgow and postdoctoral research associate at the University of Cambridge, commented: “Our study lays the foundation for building relationships with robots, positioning them as valuable conversational partners, and providing crucial evidence for their potential inclusion in interventions supporting emotional health.
“It is exciting to see how this technology can be used for social good, providing meaning and a safe space to those in need. When conducting the experiment during the pandemic, we observed how a robot could lift people’s mood amid very dark and isolated times.
“Considering the recent advances in AI (e.g., generative AI and Large language models, like GPT), studies like this are crucial. They help us better understand how humans establish healthy and constructive relationships with AI agents, such as robots, supporting the ethical and responsible deployment of this technology in the future.”
The research was funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme, and under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant ENTWINE: European Training Network on Informal Care, and the European Research Council (ERC) grant SOCIAL ROBOTS.
A Heriot-Watt University researcher has been awarded almost £1 million in funding to develop a mass manufacturing process for a type of hyper-fast optical fibre that could replace conventional telecoms networks.
Dr Calum Ross secured the funding award of £970,000 through the Future Leaders Fellowships programme of UKRI, the UK’s national funding agency for research and innovation.
Dr Ross has spent two years developing an automated process that would allow the mass production of hollow-core fibre — a type of optical fibre that carries light in air about 50% faster than conventional solid glass optical fibre.
“Hollow-core fibre is currently made using a manual process that involves stacking fibre systems by hand – so it can’t be manufactured at scale,” he explained. “I’ve developed a laser-based fabrication approach that is automated and allows me to make a fibre that can be mass manufactured and can also have any internal structure.”
This “freeform” hollow-core fibre offers much higher data transmission speeds than conventional optical fibre, and has many applications in industries including telecoms, manufacturing, and healthcare.
Dr Ross believes the system he is developing could supersede the conventional method of making optical fibre in the future, and that hollow-core fibre could eventually replace all conventional telecoms networks used around the world.
The funding from UKRI allows Dr Ross to recruit a professional postdoctoral researcher and a team of PhD students. Over the four-year project, the team will aim to develop their manufacturing process and establish a group of researchers who are pioneering the field of freeform fibre optics. The Future Leaders Fellows scheme also has an optional three-year extension.
Industry partners in the project include telecoms company BT, as well as laser company Chromacity, a spin-out from Heriot-Watt University in 2013.
Professor Dame Ottoline Leyser, chief executive of UKRI, commented on the funding award: “UKRI’s Future Leaders Fellowships provide researchers and innovators with long-term support and training, giving them the freedom to explore adventurous new ideas, and to build dynamic careers that break down the boundaries between sectors and disciplines.
“The fellows announced today illustrate how this scheme empowers talented researchers and innovators to build the diverse and connected research and innovation system we need to shorten the distance between discovery and prosperity across the UK.”
Bioliberty, the Scots medtech startup which has created a soft robotic glove to help with the rehabilitation of stroke patients, has received almost half a million pounds in new funding to accelerate its product to market.
The firm secured £435,000 from the Biomedical Catalyst, Innovate UK’s flagship grant funding mechanism to transform innovative ideas into commercially viable businesses.
The Edinburgh-based company’s robotic glove works by assisting a patient to open and close their hand, an action which can be severely limited following a stroke.
Developed alongside physiotherapists, occupational therapists, and clinicians, the glove has built-in sensors that allows it to vary levels of resistance, helping to tailor rehabilitation exercises to the user.
The new funding is set to go towards developing the machine learning and data collection elements of the product.
Statistics from the UK’s Stroke Association state that someone has a stroke every five minutes in this country, affecting 100,000 people every year.
It’s also estimated that 1.3 million people in the UK have had a stroke with many requiring ongoing therapy to recover from the symptoms.
New guidelines from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) published in October states that stroke victims should receive up to three hours of rehabilitation a day, five days a week.
However, the Stroke Association has voiced concerns over the NHS’ ability to deliver on this target.
Bioliberty, which has already raised more than £3.5 million in funding and created 8 new roles within the company over the last six months, believes the new technology can help deliver on these new guidelines.
The startup is based at the National Robotarium in Edinburgh, which works with partners around the globe to define, develop, and resolve industry challenges through the application of robotics and AI.
Speaking on the company’s product and the new funding, Conan Bradley, co-founder at Bioliberty, said: “Bioliberty is on the verge of a revolutionary leap in rehabilitation technology. Our upcoming trials for our soft robotic glove are set to ignite the United States, with top rehab clinics eagerly in discussions.
“With this newfound funding, we’re poised to accelerate trials and expedite our market launch. But we’re not stopping at the U.S.; the UK beckons, with a significant demand for innovative rehabilitation solutions amidst the latest NICE guidelines.
“Having access to the National Robotarium’s state-of-the-art office and lab facilities, including its ecosystem of collaborators, industry experts and academic teams, has been vital in helping us to develop our product.”
Lisa Farrell, business development manager at the National Robotarium, also commented: “With an ageing population, demand for robotic solutions to assist in the rehabilitation of those who’ve experienced a stroke will be in great demand.
“Stroke is the leading cause of disability worldwide, so Bioliberty’s product is addressing a global need, which is one of the core missions of the National Robotarium.
“The National Robotarium’s mission is to develop robotic and AI solutions which make people safer, healthier and more productive and working with tenant companies, we want to provide a catalyst for entrepreneurship, and deliver economic and societal benefits.”
UK Government minister for Scotland, Malcolm Offord, also remarked: “This pioneering technology has the potential to become a vital tool for health professionals to help improve stroke patients’ care during their rehabilitation process.
“The UK Government has invested £21 million in the National Robotarium helping foster world-leading research and support high quality jobs, investment and growth, as part of our more than £2.7 billion investment to level up across Scotland.”
Eos Advisory, the St Andrews-based impact investment firm, has grown its headcount to 11 with a number of executive appointments aimed at supporting the firm’s growing portfolio, which now totals 18 companies.
Anne Muir joins the firm as director of portfolio from the University of Dundee, where she was deputy director at its research and innovation services, as well as the head of IP and commercialisation. Rob Halliday also joins Eos as investment director from SIS Ventures, where he was a senior investment manager.
They join recent recruits Jill Arnold, the former head of SIS Ventures who is now investment relationship director at Eos, and Calum Keddie, investment executive at Eos, who began his career on Rolls-Royce’s commercial graduate programme before taking up a financial analyst role with Dutch bank ING.
Andrew McNeill, Eos’s managing partner, said: “The growth of the portfolio and the overall quantum of our investments means we needed to build more capacity and expertise.
“We couldn’t be happier to have Anne and Rob join Jill and Calum on the executive team. Together with our advisory team, we now have the right mix to guide us and our portfolio companies through the next phase of growth.”
Eos has also completed the third annual close of the Eos Innovation Fund (EIS), which is the cornerstone of the firm’s investment model, enabling Eos to invest £15-20 million per annum at the seed stage. The firm, which invests into predominantly Scottish science and technology companies that are addressing key global issues, recently returned a double-digit return to investors from portfolio company ENOUGH (previously 3F Bio), the first of two exits during Q4.
Mark Beaumont, partner at Eos, said: “The Eos Innovation Fund has allowed us to work with individual investors, companies, and family offices in a way we couldn’t when we only operated as an angel group.
“The concept of an annual subscription gives us far greater certainty in access to capital and allows our investors to have a long term stake in a portfolio of highly impactful and high potential companies, all focused on areas of sustainability and quality of life.”
In June, Eos announced that British Business Investments, a wholly-owned commercial subsidiary of the British Business Bank, will commit up to £10 million to Eos via its Regional Angels Programme. The funding will be allocated to invest alongside Eos’s Angel Syndicate and EIS Innovation Fund.
Eos has also provided support to Ana Stewart, a partner with Eos, around Pathways Forward. Pathways Forward was launched in September, following the publication of the Scottish Government-commissioned Pathways: A New Approach for Women in Entrepreneurship report in February. The report, co-authored by Mark Logan, the Scottish Government’s chief entrepreneurial adviser, is aimed at achieving gender equality in entrepreneurship.
Spotify, the digital music streaming service, has announced that it’s cutting its workforce by 17% in a bid to reduce costs.
The Swedish technology giant employed just over 9,200 members of staff as of 2023, meaning that around 1,500 people will be affected by the layoff round.
In an email shared to all employees this morning, chief executive Daniel Ek explained the “difficult decision” means that “many smart, talented and hard-working people will be departing us.”
He cited slow economic growth and a too large cost structure as the main reasons behind the decision. This is despite the company gaining €3.4 billion (£2.9bn) in total revenue in Q3 2023, an 11% year-on-year increase.
“When we look back on 2022 and 2023, it has truly been impressive what we have accomplished. But, at the same time, the reality is much of this output was linked to having more resources,” Ek said. “By most metrics, we were more productive but less efficient. We need to be both.”
“The decision to reduce our team size is a hard but crucial step towards forging a stronger, more efficient Spotify for the future. But it also highlights that we need to change how we work,” he later added, suggesting that the company must become “relentlessly resourceful.”
This is not the first layoff round Spotify has made this year.
In January, Spotify eliminated around 6% of jobs due to the “challenging economic environment.” Later, in June, 200 people were let go from the streaming service’s podcast division.
It’s also but one of many tech layoffs that have happened this year following dramatic growth in 2020 and 2021, when the pandemic led many tech companies to scale up their teams, and then the post-pandemic economic headwinds of 2022 and 2023.
Snugg, the Scots energy efficiency tech startup, has launched a new digital platform with EDF to help homeowners make their homes more energy efficient.
The Home Efficiency Hub on EDF’s website gives homeowners a view of the best ways to make savings on their energy bills and reduce the carbon emissions of their homes.
It identifies areas where improvements could be made, from air source heat pumps, solar PV panels, and insulation to cheaper options such as draught-proofing. It also shows estimated energy bill savings.
The platform additionally aims to simplify the process of identifying EDF-approved or recommended installers, and highlights applicable grants and funding to reduce upfront costs.
Recent research by EDF has shown that nearly a third (29%) of homeowners are worried about affording their energy bills this winter, with 43% of people feeling they have no control over their household energy spend.
Further, while 68% of homeowners are thinking about making their home more energy efficient, nearly half (49%) agree that conflicting advice about energy use makes them unsure what to believe.
Speaking on energy efficiency and the new platform, Robin Peters, CEO of Snugg, said: “Over a fifth of UK emissions come from homes and we rank amongst the worst in Europe for home energy efficiency. This is simply unsustainable – from both a cost and environmental perspective.
“The EDF Home Efficiency Hub is a powerful new platform that uses Snugg technology to help UK homeowners reduce emissions. Its launch will make it easier and more manageable for UK households to improve their home energy efficiency and in-so-doing accelerate the transition to Net Zero.”
Dan Hopcroft, zero carbon heat director at EDF, also commented: “At EDF, saving customers cash and carbon is the motivation for everything we do. The Home Efficiency Hub gives users the ability to do just this – undertake improvements to bring down their energy bills permanently and reduce their household emissions.
“With the Home Efficiency Hub, we are making it easier than ever to access home efficiency upgrades and the financial support customers need, making sustainability easier for everyone, and helping Britain in the journey towards Net Zero.”
The Home Efficiency Hub is the latest step in Snugg’s collaboration with EDF. The Edinburgh-based startup added EDF’s network of installers to its platform earlier this year.
At the Scottish Chambers of Commerce annual dinner in Glasgow last night, November 30th, the cabinet secretary said he was committed to strengthening the partnership with business and consulting on policy.
This comes amid prolonged dissatisfaction from members of the Scottish business community with how the Scottish government interacts with the business environment.
“The voice of business is not just being listened to, it is being put at the heart of government,” stated Gray. “We have published an implementation plan on recommendations deriving from the New Deal Group and I am very conscious that, to keep earning your trust, I must deliver on it.
“This will not provide a solution to all policy issues or stop differences of opinion, but I hope it will ensure that we operate on the basis of no surprises. Our policy should be informed by your expertise and your business planning should be informed by clear, early signals of policy.”
The government’s New Deal for Business Group was created earlier this year as a forum between government and business leaders on how Scottish companies can be supported better, not least through policy.
The recommendations from the New Deal Group included having business voices involved in policy development, assessing the impact of regulations on business in different ways, and keeping non-domestic rates reforms under review.
The New Deal Group itself is one recent measure to help with the reconciliation of the fractured Scottish business-government relationship.
The Fraser of Allander Institute’s Scottish Business Monitor recently discovered that just 9% of companies agree that the Scottish government understands the business environment in Scotland.
Further, the research found that only 8% of businesses feel that the Scottish government engages effectively with the sector they work in, with 67% of firms disagreeing.
At an exclusive Scottish tech round roundtable event held in June, Peter Proud, the CEO and founder of Edinburgh-headquartered tech company Forrit, said that “There’s a real disconnect between government and business here in Scotland at the moment,” and “people like myself are drifting away […] because I don’t feel we’re being listened to.”
Stephen Leckie, the president of Scottish Chambers of Commerce, urged politicians in attendance at last night’s event to focus on competitiveness, internationalisation, and sustainability to capture future economic growth.
Leckie said: “I’d call on all Governments to avoid policy decisions which create unintended consequences against the business community. I’d ask our leaders to stop taxing and disincentivising business growth and entrepreneurship. That’s why we need a long-term tax strategy and a clear policy agenda – laser-focused on business confidence and investment.”
The deal included participation from current shareholders in addition to Kelvin Capital, the Glasgow-based investment syndicate, and Scottish Enterprise, the national economic development agency.
It’s claimed that Fi-Live offers “better than Bluetooth” audio over Wi-Fi, providing higher quality, longer range, and faster transmission while connecting to the standard Wi-Fi systems in PCs, tablets, and phones.
The company says this is ideal for live music applications like the guitar or microphone, time-sensitive systems like TV speakers and gaming headphones, and performance applications like VR, Hi-Fi speakers, or headphones.
The new funding is set to enable Ingenious to look at applying the core Fi-Live technology to new applications in wireless TV speakers, gaming and VR, as well as secure new licensing partners.
Joining the team to help lead the commercialisation of Fi-Live is Steve McMahon, with more than 30 years experience in leading marketing, sales, and product management activities in a variety of high-tech companies.
Steve was recently instrumental in a trade sale of Scottish technology company Optoscribe, where he served as chief commercial officer, to Intel.
John Crawford, Ingenious Audio chief executive, said: “Steve brings the skillset and first-hand experience of generating demand in a very targeted manner which is critical to advance Fi-Live as we expand from being a product focused company in one niche to a broad technology provider.”
Steve McMahon himself noted: “In applications utilizing mobile phones, the removal of headphone and power connectors has made it increasingly difficult for musicians and other users to interact with these massively powerful and convenient devices.
“Moreover the developments in the next generation of Wi-Fi bring extensive data capabilities over huge physical areas facilitating future applications for real time audio streaming in a range of sectors including music, entertainment and communications.”
John McNicol of Kelvin Capital also commented: “We are delighted to continue to support Ingenious Audio with both the funding and the introduction to industry expert Steve McMahon.
“This is a truly exciting time for the company as they work towards expanding the business in to both a technology provider and a product company.”
The Scots investment syndicate closed the first half of 2023 having concluded record investment of £7.8 million into its portfolio of Scottish technology companies.
The UK Government has published new draft guidance for employers to help them upskill their employees’ AI understanding and skills.
Developed with The Alan Turing Institute and the Innovate UK BridgeAI programme, the guidance is intended to help employers boost their employees’ grasp on artificial intelligence so they can deploy it in their day-to-day roles.
The new draft guidance covers five particular areas, such as knowledge of how AI can be used effectively; the ability to carry out a range of tasks; using appropriate behaviour when working with AI; and professional values for developing a sound judgement in situations where AI could be used.
Underpinning the guidance is four personas, ranging from “AI Citizen” to “AI Leaders,” created in a bid to help employers and employees identify skills gaps and improve learning and development.
While the guidance has been published, it’s currently in a public consultation phase. The UK Government intends to work with the business community and experts to further develop the guidance before a final version is released.
Despite being a draft, the framework has still been published at an opportune time. According to a recent study from Salesforce, many UK workers say they lack the skills to use generative artificial intelligence tools safely and accurately, but are planning to embrace them or already are using them anyway.
The minister for AI, Viscount Camrose, remarked on the guidance, saying: “Making sure workers up and down the country have the skills they need for their jobs with and in AI is a key part of our strategy in making the UK an AI powerhouse and ensuring the skills of our workforce keep pace with this rapidly developing technology.
“This guidance will be vital in helping us realise that ambition, continuing an important conversation with businesses across the UK to make sure the steps they can take are practical, functional, and successful.
“Having a workforce which is equipped to work alongside AI will drive growth for businesses and allow us to realise the enormous opportunities AI presents in every sector of our economy.”
Matt Forshaw, senior advisor for skills at The Alan Turing Institute, further added: “Businesses are increasingly interested to learn how AI could enhance their productivity and competitiveness, but they also want to ensure they have the skills and competencies to adopt these technologies safely and ethically.
“The new framework clarifies routes to workforce upskilling and will support businesses across the country to harness the value of AI. This project is underpinned by strong partnership working and we look forward to seeing the impact of this project on the current and future AI workforce.”
The guidance marks the latest act in an ongoing push by the UK Government to ensure the harnessing of the rapidly evolving technology, and just weeks after it announced that £118 million is being plugged into AI skills funding.
According to new research commissioned by BayWa r.e., the renewable energy firm, online discussions around the climate crisis have fallen by 12% since 2022.
The study, which was undertaken on behalf of BayWa r.e., reviewed more than 41 million data points, analysing trends across social media, news sites, and blogging platforms from January last year to this month.
In addition to the headline statistic that digital conversations around climate change fell by 12% – despite the expectation that 2023 will be the hottest year on record – the research also uncovered that conversations concerning COP, the United Nations’ yearly climate change conference, have also declined.
In terms of numbers, COP28, which kicks off tomorrow in Dubai, has received 425,000 mentions in the four weeks leading up to it, while COP26 had 1.6 million within the same period. This means that COP-related discussions are down 73% since COP26, which was held in Glasgow two years ago and dubbed “the world’s best last chance” for the climate crisis.
Amid these declines, online conversations about artificial intelligence – not least about its impact on our lives – has shot up 342% since last year. Most notably, mentions of AI in an end-of-the-world context are 8% higher than climate change, while mentions around the climate crisis in this respect have actually fallen by 23.5% since 2022. This is in spite of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change underlining earlier this year that we’re at a “critical moment in history.”
Remarking on the research, Matthias Taft, BayWa r.e.’s chief executive, commented: “At a time when, more than ever, we need to be taking climate action, the conversation has been falling – with discussions focused more on potential existential threats than increasing world climatic disasters, which we are now regularly experiencing globally.
“What’s equally concerning is that this drop in conversation is happening in the run-up to the world’s biggest climate conference – one tasked with solving these very problems. Arguably demonstrating a lack of belief or even interest in COP28’s ability to deliver action when it is needed most.”
Relatedly, DIGIT covered the news this morning that the UK’s financial watchdog, the FCA, is releasing new measures in a bid to battle greenwashing, and help improve the trust and transparency of sustainable investment products.
The Royal Society of Edinburgh’s medals recognise achievement in research, teamwork, and collaboration within Scottish higher education institutions (HEI), and between Scottish and other institutes or businesses.
Winning a Mary Sommerville medal was the Peace and Conflict Resolution Evidence Platform (PeaceRep), a consortium of research and non-governmental organisations working to support peace processes across the globe.
Led by the university, and funded by the UK Government, PeaceRep uses big data analytics and research to help peacemakers learn lessons from previous peace deals.
The data has assisted those attempting to find peaceful solutions to conflict in countries including Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, Yemen, Sudan, Ethiopia, and Myanmar.
“At a time when the world seems perilously engaged in war, this medal affirms the importance of continual peacemaking in dark and dangerous moments,” said professor Christine Bell, who leads the PeaceRep team of over 50 people.
“The award of the medal will encourage us, and we hope others, to continue to explore how new technologies can be used to harness innovation in research and practice.”
The PeaceRep project includes members from other universities, including the University of St Andrews and the University of Stirling, as well as international organisations and local research partners.
Also winning a Mary Sommerville medal was EAVE II, based at the university’s health-focussed Usher Institute, which developed a data resource that monitored and forecasted the COVID-19 pandemic as it grew in Scotland.
The resource used patient data to track the pandemic, in addition to the effects of interventions such as vaccines, within Scotland in near real-time. This led to evidence and analyses that supported the public health and policy response throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
The University of Edinburgh’s researchers led the collaborative study with Public Health Scotland, as well as the Universities of St. Andrews, Aberdeen, and Strathclyde.
Aziz Sheikh, professor of primary care research and development at the Usher Institute, remarked: “It was an incredible privilege to work with our interdisciplinary Scotland-wide team of academics and professional services staff, public health and clinical experts, and our fantastic patient and public involvement group to help answer some of the most important scientific questions in the world at the time.
“I very much hope that our expert team will be able to build on these pandemic experiences, using our outstanding health data assets, to help address other pressing issues facing our NHS and through doing so improve health outcomes for the people of Scotland and beyond.”
Dr Lara Kalnins, a lecturer in the University of Edinburgh’s school of geosciences, received the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s Rosemary Hutton Award for her work in combining data, analysis, and modelling in the study of the Earth’s dynamics.
Kalnin’s research has looked at what patterns of volcanism can tell us about the convection of the Earth’s plates and mantle change over time.
“I am honoured and delighted to receive the Rosemary Hutton Medal and grateful for this recognition of the potential and power of the integrative style of research I do,” she commented.
“My thanks as well to all my collaborators and students – as always, science is a team effort, and I could not have done my part without theirs.”
According to Gartner, cloud computing will shift from being a technology disruptor to an essential component for sustaining business competitiveness by 2028.
The IT research firm and consultancy noted that, as it stands, organisations are utilising cloud computing either as a technology disruptor or a capacity enabler.
Those making use of the cloud as a disruptor are harnessing its potential to positively change non-cloud, data-centre-oriented computing styles and technologies, Gartner said.
Further, companies adopting cloud technology as a capability enabler are using it to drive new capabilities, such as serverless functions, rapid continuous integration/cloud delivery, and processes that were difficult to achieve pre-cloud.
However, over the next few years, cloud computing is predicted to continue to evolve to become an integral business necessity. Most organisations will be leveraging cloud as a business necessity by 2028, it’s been forecast, with more than 50% of enterprises using industry cloud platforms to accelerate business initiatives.
These predictions come as spending on cloud services continues to rise. The research firm recently forecasted that worldwide end-user spending on public cloud services will grow to a total of $679 billion (£554bn~) in 2024. Further, the spend in this area is projected to exceed $1 trillion in 2027.
Speaking on why firms are directing substantial financial resources into the cloud, Milind Govekar, chief of research with Gartner’s program and portfolio management (PPM) research, said: “Organizations are actively investing in cloud technology due to its potential to foster innovation, create market disruptions, and enhance customer retention in order to gain a competitive edge.”
However, he also noted that “While many organizations have started to seize the technical advantages of cloud, only a few have unlocked its full potential in supporting business transformation. As a result, organizations are using the cloud to launch a new wave of disruption driven by artificial intelligence (AI), enabling them to unlock business value at scale.”
Govekar advised that “With cloud computing becoming an integral part of business operations in 2028, CIOs and IT leaders will have to implement a highly efficient cloud operating model in order to achieve their desired business objectives.”
Specifically, in a survey of nearly 300 risk executives in September, it found that the risk associated with dependence on a particular cloud provider for multiple business capabilities is in the top five emerging risks for companies, and for the second year running.
“Many organizations are now in a position where they would face severe disruption in the event of the failure of a single provider,” noted Ran Xu, research director in the Gartner legal risk and compliance practice.
The firm’s DPI is cardboard-based with the same dimensions as a credit card, and the platform technology includes a breathable membrane to help deliver individual, inhalable medicines to patients.
Inhalable medicines are already widely used to treat health conditions such as asthma, epilepsy, and allergies. However, delivery options have been somewhat limited due to aspects like cost, performance, and environmental impact.
Scottish investment syndicate Archangels led the £2 million funding round with support from British Business Investments (BBI), seed investors, and Dr Yusuf Hamied, the non-executive chairman of pharmaceutical giant Cipla.
1nhaler is set to use the investment to work with global businesses and help bring new and existing drugs to patients in a more efficient and affordable way.
The Scots firm was founded by Don Smith and Lisa McMyn in 2017. Its team includes the likes of chief scientific officer Helen Muirhead, who had responsibility for GSK’s respiratory portfolio, including the Diskus and Ellipta inhalers.
“Our DPI has the potential to become the simplest, most convenient single-dose, disposable inhaler on the market, revolutionising the delivery of critical drugs, without the cost and environmental impact of existing devices,” said McMyn.
“Securing funding from Archangels is invaluable for the next steps in the 1nhaler’s development. Their life sciences expertise and patient capital approach are exactly what we’re looking for in a funding partner.”
Dr Sarah Hardy, director and head of new investments at Archangels, also commented: “Don, Lisa and the team at 1nhaler have developed a truly innovative technology platform with a clear route to market and opportunity to positively disrupt the status quo of single-dose medicine delivery.
“We’re proud to add 1nhaler to our portfolio of Scotland’s leading life sciences and technology businesses and look forward to working with them to increase the availability of life-saving drugs affordably and sustainably.”
Operating since 1992, Archangels’ investor members have invested over £160 million in early-stage companies with new technologies, protectable IP, and the potential to scale globally.
Following its phase two investigation, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has provisionally found that Adobe’s deal to buy Figma would likely harm choice and innovation in digital design software.
The inquiry is the latest in a series of actions undertaken by the CMA, and led by an independent group, amid concerns that the deal could negatively impact the UK’s digital design sector.
Its new, more in-depth investigation finds the deal would eliminate competition between Figma, the world’s leading provider of product design software, and Adobe, one of the firm’s main competitors in this area.
The regulator discovered that around 80% of the professional product design market uses Figma’s software to deliver contemporary websites and apps, and provisionally concluded that the deal would remove the need for Adobe to innovate with AdobeXD, its existing product design offering.
Further, the group tentatively concluded that Adobe stopped development on new product design software, and which could have competed more closely with Figma, as a consequence of the prospective merger.
Adobe is also the largest supplier of image editing and illustrator software with its Photoshop and Illustrator products. The inquiry group found that Figma is a credible future competitor in this area, and that if the deal went ahead, competition between the two organisations wouldn’t occur and innovation wouldn’t happen as a result.
The CMA will now consult on the provisional findings, alongside considering potential solutions to the concerns. This includes outright blocking the deal.
Margot Daly, chair of the independent group conducting the latest investigation, said: “The digital design sector is worth nearly £60 billion to the UK – representing 2.7% of the national economy – and employs over 850,000 people in highly skilled work. The software this sector uses is pivotal to its success, so the CMA has from the outset been very focused on ensuring this merger doesn’t adversely affect such an important part of the UK economy.
“Adobe and Figma are two of the world leading providers of software for app and web designers and our investigation so far has found that they are close competitors.
“This proposed deal, therefore, has the potential to impact the UK’s digital design industry by reducing choice, innovation and the development of new competitive products.
“Today’s decision is provisional, and we will now consult on our findings and listen to any further views before reaching a final decision.”
“A lot of people who meet me say, ‘We’re not innovative anymore. We’re not doing cool, new things,’” revealed Skyscanner’s chief technology officer, Andrew Phillips, during his DIGIT Expo keynote last Thursday.
Despite a perception that Skyscanner—the travel site and tech unicorn based out of Scotland—isn’t as inventive as it once was, Phillips doesn’t agree with this assessment. As he said himself, “I think a lot of people think innovation has to be big ticket items that are very easy to see. But actually, our teams are innovating all of the time.”
The CTO is right, of course: innovation doesn’t always manifest in ways that are easily and outwardly recognisable. There’s also the fact that innovation itself isn’t a linear, one-way thing. Instead, it’s more akin to a pendulum, swinging back and forth as necessary.
Phillips delved into the task—and challenge—of innovation in his thirty-minute keynote, explaining how Skyscanner has approached it through numerous internal projects and initiatives (not all of which succeeded).
Here’s a rundown of some of the talk’s key items, for those who didn’t have the opportunity to attend.
Speaking the Same Language(s)
One of the first examples provided by Phillips on how Skyscanner has innovated, which is also reflective of the swinging pendulum, concerns programming languages—and a lot of them.
In the late naughties, when Phillips first started at the company as a software engineer, a small handful of languages were being used. However, and in a bid to harness innovation, the team routinely adopted new languages. “If there was a new thing, a new way of doing something, we jumped on them. So we had another one and another one and another one,” divulged Phillips.
While the accumulation of divergent programming languages (“hundreds,” Phillips said) did create issues—it was difficult for people to move teams due to separate languages being used, for instance—there was an undeniable silver lining. It provided Skyscanner with the opportunity to recognise that, in some cases, you have to go backwards instead of forwards to be innovative.
“The lesson we’ve learned from that is to not necessarily jump on the next bit of technology, the next thing that’s come up. There may be value, there may be benefits, and we need to evaluate that. But we went from one to hundreds. And we’ve been pulling back and trying to scale back.”
This example was one of a few concerning technological innovation—but Phillips also touched on innovation in other significant areas, not least product.
Honouring the Product Life Cycle
Considering that product is the beating heart of Skyscanner, it wasn’t surprising to hear that the company has routinely tinkered in this crucial area.
One specific example concerned “facilitated booking,” an offering launched in 2016. Its aim was to facilitate flight bookings on Skyscanner’s side, rather than redirecting people to the airline’s website to complete the transaction. It was also built to help capture a mobile market through a cleaner, more engaging user interface. “The mobile booking experience was shocking,” Phillips noted. “Most people at the time were not booking on mobile.”
Facilitated booking was an initial hit. As Phillips explained, “We had a 50% increase in conversion on mobile on our first release—a hugely valuable product, and hugely innovative at the time.” This then led Skyscanner to build out the offering further, which included the creation of an Edinburgh-based contact centre to handle inbound calls. Phillips recounted that the product and its infrastructure “grew, and grew, and grew.”
However, later down the line, and after “looking at it more holistically,” the pendulum began to swing backwards, not least due to other companies in the industry following in Skyscanner’s footsteps. Referring to one well-known firm in particular, Phillips said they “basically copied our look and feel—the product looked really similar. Their conversion rate had come up on par with ours.” This subsequently meant that the product had become a cost centre without its original impact.
Although there was pride in creating the product in the first place, there was power in winding it down, acknowledging that true innovation often necessitates a change of tact. As Phillips mentioned, “We felt really proud that we had the guts to say, ‘Actually, this is not the right thing for us anymore. We’re going to stop doing this, shut down the product.’”
What’s more, by making that decision, it enabled the team who’d been running the booking system to pivot to more valuable—and beneficial—work.
Reorienting where and how innovation is being made, whether that’s forward, backward, or somewhere in between, can pay dividends. And in Skyscanner’s case, it has.
Specifically, the team that worked as part of the booking system was made up of around 50 to 60 people. Further, tens of thousands of pounds—“if not hundreds of thousands,” Phillips elaborated—was spent on infrastructure and running it.
When the call to drop facilitated booking was made, it enabled peoples’ efforts to be redistributed, resulting in significant financial gains for Skyscanner. However, these wins didn’t stem from the substantial projects that are often equated with innovation. As Phillips recounted, “They pivoted and started making small incremental improvements to our products; they made lots of proofs of concept, lots of experiments. Most of them didn’t work, but some of them added 1% or 2% to our business—that’s multiple millions of pounds a year in extra revenue. They’re not the big, amazing projects that I think often people kind of hang onto, but they’re the things that give you the small gains that all add up.”
For Phillips, this speaks to how innovation is happening all the time at Skyscanner, though it may not be as externally perceptible. As he said, “Whenever someone says to me now, ‘Oh, are you innovating?’ I’m like, ‘You go and speak to anyone in various different teams, and they’ll be innovating in their area, innovating in their space.’”
Iterating on Innovation
Innovation is an inherently tricky thing. How far should a business wanting to scale swing in one direction? When is the right time to go further, or, on the other hand, pull back? When it comes to Skyscanner’s historic swinging of the pendulum, the oscillations have been borne out of necessity.
“I think Skyscanner has done this pendulum swing a lot,” said Phillips. “We had to grow, we had to do certain things, and I don’t—and I don’t think anyone—regrets the things we’ve done. But we had to learn when something had come to the end of its lifespan or run its natural course and pull back.”
Even for Skyscanner—a company that’s a point of pride for the Scottish technology sector, considering its successes—striking a balancing act proves difficult to this day, 20 years after its founding: “We haven’t found that perfect middle point by a long way,” admitted Phillips.
While that ongoing journey continues, Phillips’ talk on Skyscanner and innovation raised myriad valuable points, including the intrinsic non-linearity of innovation and the fact that it can—and does—take many different forms. It’s this latter fact that’s perhaps the keynote’s most inspiring takeaway: Innovation is happening everywhere, all of the time. We just don’t always get to witness it first-hand.
The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) have observed a rise in zero-day vulnerabilities and exploits in third-party software being capitalised on by North Korean state-linked adversaries, providing them access to both specific targets and indiscriminate organisations alike.
Further, in their new joint warning, the security agencies stated that not only will the threat of these attacks likely increase further, but the attack methods themselves have become more sophisticated as well.
As an example, in March 2023, North Korea-based cyber actors leveraged a vulnerability of the MagicLine4NX security authentication programme to intrude into a target organisation’s — a media outlet’s — intranet. They then exploited a network-lined system vulnerability to gain access to private information and data.
In light of the rise of this specific kind of attack by state-linked actors, the security agencies have advised organisations to establish and implement mitigative measures, not least to monitor network infrastructure so that atypical traffic from supply chain applications can be detected.
The NCSC’s director of operations, Paul Chichester, commented on the situation: “In an increasingly digital and interconnected world, software supply chain attacks can have profound, far-reaching consequences for impacted organisations.
“Today, with our partners in the Republic of Korea, we have issued a warning about the growing threat from DPRK state-linked cyber actors carrying out such attacks with increasing sophistication.
“We strongly encourage organisations to follow the mitigative actions in the advisory to improve their resilience to supply chain attacks and reduce the risk of compromise.”
The NCSC and NIS consider these supply chain-oriented attacks to align with and help bolster wider priorities for North Korea. These include the generation of revenue, espionage, and the stealing of advanced technologies.
The new joint warning — and the agencies’ accompanying recommendations — comes just days after it was announced that the UK had entered a “landmark” science and technology accord with South Korea.
Following the new agreement, the two countries are set to work closer together regarding collaborations and commitments on artificial intelligence, semiconductors, space cooperation, and other high-priority technological areas.
“The Republic of Korea is a tech powerhouse, and a vital partner to the UK,” science and technology secretary, Michelle Donelan, commented.
“We share the same values and face the same challenges: from creating future jobs and industries fit for the AI age, to bringing the power of science to bear on climate change and supporting ageing populations.
“As part of the new Accord between our two countries, this raft of agreements will future-proof our relationship for decades to come: a partnership that is already bearing fruit as we work closely together on the next AI Safety Summit.”
According to new research from 8×8, the cloud-based unified communications vendor, many domestic businesses are turning to AI and automation amid permacrisis — an extended time of instability and insecurity.
Its report, Permacrisis: The View from the IT Frontline, surveyed over 550 IT decision-makers in UK businesses to uncover how permacrisis has impacted organisations, their IT teams, and their approaches.
Across different businesses and industries, respondents agreed that Brexit, COVID-19, and recent inflation events have had the largest impact on organisations and their people in the last few years. Inflation is seen as the major factor leading to extended periods of instability and uncertainty, however, indicated by 64% of respondents.
The vast majority (91%) of IT decision-makers said they’re feeling the effects of permacrisis to some degree, meaningly only 9% of respondents said their colleagues do not appear to be fatigued by ongoing events.
In response to the impacts of permacrisis, 94% of respondents cited that their organisations are implementing technology changes to reduce crisis fatigue and be future-ready. However, the level to which companies are making changes is varied. Seventy-three percent said only some or few changes were being implemented, while 21% said extensive changes were being made in their organisation.
Two particular areas that are helping firms through this period, the research found, are artificial intelligence and automation. Seventy-eight percent of IT decision-makers said that they’re already seeing the use of AI and automation for increasing efficiency, while nearly the same number (76%) agreed that their organisation is using AI and automation to better serve their customers.
Relatedly, two-thirds stated that macro issues are expediting their digital transformation plans, with figures for delaying changes and no change equally splitting the remaining 35%.
Further, structural changes are also being made to help address the crisis fatigue, with 80% believing their organisation is committed to remote working where possible.
“The UK has experienced a number of crises over the last decade, with no end in sight,” said Chris Angus, vice-president, EMEA contact centre engagement at 8×8, Inc. “As a result of this unprecedented series of ongoing, unexpected events at the societal and global level, businesses are being forced to constantly adapt to significant amounts of change.
“Further, the expectations of customers and employees have also shifted along the way and digital technology has played a fundamental role in enabling organisations to adapt and show resilience.
“As companies now have more data, and demand for real-time insights, the use of AI will go beyond customer engagement, and be deployed to run more efficient businesses and provide better services and offerings.”
“AI is already disrupting certain vertical markets and appears to have reached an accelerated development phase in several areas, including language understanding,” added Patrick Watson, head of research, Cavell Group.
“This presents both a challenge and an opportunity for all businesses with AI infused technology likely to permeate and impact the majority of sectors over the next few years.”
The chancellor of the exchequer, Jeremy Hunt, has announced a £320 million plan as part of his Mansion House reforms aiming to support high-potential companies and drive domestic innovation.
Under the multi-million pound plan, announced ahead of the Autumn Statement tomorrow, the government is to support new investment vehicles tailored to the needs of pension schemes.
The sum of £250 million is to be committed to two successful bidders under the Long-term Investment for Technology and Science (LFTS) initiative, subject to contract. The government said this will provide over a billion pounds of investment from pension funds, and other sources, into UK technology and science companies.
A new growth fund is also to be established within the British Business Bank (BBB), to complement private investment vehicles. The growth fund is set to draw on a capital base of over £7 billion to give pension schemes access to opportunities in high-potential businesses.
Further, £20 million is to be used specifically to foster more university spinout companies. At least £50 million in additional funding is to go towards the British Business Bank’s Future Fund: Breakthrough programme, which provides direct investment to help spinouts to scale up.
An independent review — led by Irene Tracey, vice-chancellor of Oxford University, and Andrew Williamson, managing partner of Cambridge Innovation Capital — recommended policies that should be adopted by universities and investors to help speed up and better support the spinout process.
The chancellor has accepted the recommendations, and will set out his full response as part of tomorrow’s Autumn Statement.
Speaking on the spinout investment in particular, science and technology secretary Michelle Donelan commented: “Turning new ideas and innovations into blossoming businesses is the bedrock of a vibrant economy and our £20m investment will drive more successful UK spinout companies like Oxford Nanopore and Darktrace, ensuring world-class research translates into world-leading industries.
“At the same time, we need clear rules on the stakes held by universities which offer world class facilities and expertise to get those companies off the ground, so we can back future generations of innovators, in turn creating more local jobs and growing our economy.”
On the plans as a whole, Hunt remarked: “Innovation is the key to our future success as a nation and it’s vital that we do all we can to help companies start, scale and grow in the UK.
“Tomorrow’s Autumn Statement will be a huge step towards delivering our Mansion House reforms and unleashing the full potential of our pensions industry.”
While the debate of office-versus-remote work continues, new research by Hays has discovered that the number of employees in Scotland working in a hybrid way (39%) is now levelling out, with 39% also working fully in an office setting.
The even balance between hybrid and solely office-based work is indicative of a gradual yet noticeable swing to full-time office working, the recruitment firm said. Nearly a quarter (22%) of professionals in Scotland work fully remotely, however.
Based on a survey of nearly 15,000 professionals and employers, including 886 from Scotland, the research also found that over half (56%) of workers would accept a job even if hybrid working wasn’t a part of the package. This is while just under half (44%) said that they wouldn’t accept a role that didn’t have a hybrid working approach.
Meanwhile, nearly two-thirds of Scots employers (68%) are currently offering hybrid working, yet over a quarter (27%) anticipate their hybrid working offering will be altered over the next 12 months — and that they will require increased staff attendance.
“It’s clear from our research that there’s still no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to how staff want to work and how flexible employers are willing to be”, commented Keith Mason, Hays Scotland director. “But employers need to recognise that everyone needs different elements of support and development to succeed.
“Productivity levels can significantly vary from person to person depending on where they’re working and at what time of day, and what suits one person might not suit another, so it’s important for employers to take these individual preferences into account.
“We’ve certainly seen an increase in people travelling to work in recent months. Hybrid working is still there, but it’s much less than before. Employers are driven by productivity and do expect staff to attend the office more. The level of productivity from working at home needs to be clearly demonstrated by workers.”
Although hybrid working appears to be levelling out, nearly two-thirds of employers (71%) say they’ve refitted their workplace, office, or meeting rooms for a smooth hybrid working approach. This includes the installation of large screens, cameras, and microphones at the office sites.
Further, over half of businesses in Scotland (55%) now operate a hot desking policy at their workplace. 57% say this is a new approach after reducing the number of desks, compared to 43% who say they have always operated this way.
“Employers also need to be mindful of making the office a better place to work”, continued Mason.
“In some cases, employers have reconfigured their offices to make sure hybrid working offers a streamlined experience, but many have also reduced the number of desk spaces, meaning there’s not necessarily enough physical room for all staff in one workplace. Hot desking can be effective, but it doesn’t allow staff to create their own consistent and personalised workspace, so these are all crucial things to weigh-up.
“If employers are asking staff back to the office more, they need to question if they’re doing it for the right reasons such as facilitating team-building opportunities, training and development, and enhancing collaboration and creativity, whilst ensuring they also offer an enticing work environment.
“Employers need to be mindful that their staff understand the benefits of being back in the office, and this is viewed as an opportunity to improve, rather than monitor performance.”
Finally, the research showed that 40% of employers have different working policies for staff depending on their seniority, and that just under half (48%) of employees agree there should be different policies for junior and senior staff members.
The news follows a whirlwind weekend for the world’s most well-known artificial intelligence company, OpenAI, whose board on Friday announced it had ousted Sam Altman due to no longer being confident in his ability to lead.
In a statement, the company wrote that the former CEO “was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities,” which resulted in his dismissal. The details of the supposedly uncandid communications from Altman, who’s something of a poster boy for the AI industry, aren’t publicly known.
This morning, just days after the unexpected ousting, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella took to X to state that the Big Tech firm has snapped up both Altman and Brockman, the latter of whom left OpenAI in protest following the board’s decision.
“We’re extremely excited to share the news that Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, together with colleagues, will be joining Microsoft to lead a new advanced AI research team,” Nadella wrote. “We look forward to moving quickly to provide them with the resources needed for their success.”
Altman reposted the announcement, adding: “the mission continues,” to which Nadella replied: “I’m super excited to have you join as CEO of this new group, Sam, setting a new pace for innovation. We’ve learned a lot over the years about how to give founders and innovators space to build independent identities and cultures within Microsoft, including GitHub, Mojang Studios, and LinkedIn, and I’m looking forward to having you do the same.”
Microsoft has been a partner of OpenAI for a number of years, having first invested $1 billion in the Altman-led company in 2019 — and it’s since been reported that Microsoft’s cumulative investment in the firm has reached $13 billion. OpenAI’s technology can be found within Microsoft products and services, not least search engine Bing, and through its 365 suite with the Copilot assistant.
As Altman and Brockman prepare to move to Microsoft, Emmett Shear — the former CEO and co-founder of video game streaming platform Twitch — will also soon start at OpenAI, after accepting the offer to become its interim CEO.
In Nadella’s post announcing the hiring of Altman and Brockman, and regarding Microsoft’s still ongoing partnership with OpenAI, he stipulated that “We look forward to getting to know Emmett Shear and OAI’s new leadership team and working with them.”
The construction of a new Health Innovation Hub in Glasgow’s Govan district has been announced by the University of Glasgow and Kadans Science Partner, an office and lab space development company.
The Hub is set to be home to commercial businesses, as well as the University of Glasgow-led Living Laboratory for Precision Medicine, a UKRI-funded programme helping to put healthcare research and innovation into real-world clinical settings.
The Hub will include both laboratory and office space for life science and health businesses, as well as a Digital Health Validation Lab, which aims to enhance the evaluation and validation of digitalhealthtechnologies for clinical use, and accelerate their adoption into clinical practice.
Work on the new Health Innovation Hub has begun, and is due for completion in summer 2025. The Hub is supported by Scotland’s national economic development agency, Scottish Enterprise.
Professor Iain McInnes, University of Glasgow vice-principal and head of the College of Medical, Veterinary & Life Sciences, said: “The world-class facilities created here will be key to the supportive and dynamic ecosystem that brings together academics, industry partners and the NHS to achieve this goal.
“The Health Innovation Hub will be a catalyst for collaboration and innovation to better tackle global healthcare challenges, bringing real-world benefits to patients and the NHS.”
Uzma Khan, vice principal of economic development and innovation at the University of Glasgow, commented: “This is a hugely exciting project which speaks to our ambitions to expand the life sciences cluster in Govan, and our mission as a civic university.
“As a flagship project for the Glasgow Riverside Innovation District, we will commit to working closely with the community and with key stakeholders such as Clyde College, to ensure benefits are meaningful and delivered locally, and to capitalise on the opportunities for new employment and growth for Govan and across Glasgow.”
James Dawson, development manager at Kadans Science Partner, also remarked: “Along with our existing facilities at West of Scotland Science Park, this project cements Glasgow and in particular the communities of Govan and Linthouse, as key pillars in our UK growth strategy.
“Partnering with the University of Glasgow and with support from Scottish Enterprise, we look forward to collaborating on the future success of the Health Innovation Hub.”
Some customers of Samsung UK have been impacted by a data breach following the exploitation of a third-party business application used by the tech giant.
Samsung UK has informed affected customers of the incident, with an alleged screenshot of the email shared on social media by Troy Hunt, the creator and owner of breach-checking site Have I Been Pwned?.
The email asserts that the breach impacts some personal information of certain customers who made purchases on its eCommerce site, specifically between the dates of 1 July 2019 and 30 June 2020.
The information involved in the breach includes names, phone numbers, email addresses, and physical addresses — but not passwords or financial information, the company said.
In the email, it was mentioned that the incident was determined on 13 November 2023.
A Samsung UK spokesperson told DIGIT: “We were recently alerted to a cybersecurity incident, which resulted in certain contact information of some Samsung UK e-store customers being unlawfully obtained.
“No financial data, such as bank or credit card details, or customer passwords, were impacted.
“We have taken all necessary steps to resolve this security issue, including reporting the incident to the Information Commissioner’s Office and contacting affected customers.”
The company didn’t go on to state how many customers may have been impacted, or what the third-party application which was exploited was.
Speaking on the issue, Muhammad Yahya Patel, lead security engineer at Check Point Software, told DIGIT: “The supply chain is notoriously difficult to fully secure, particularly when chains of suppliers are involved.
“That is why it is so important that organisations actively monitor third-party access on the network to spot security gaps and plug them before they become attacks in the wild.”
“It also serves as yet another reminder for consumers to keep their own security in check. It is possible that hackers may leverage the stolen information to launch phishing attacks in the future using the Samsung brand as a lure.”
With a global investment value at $59bn (£47bn~), and a global deal volume of 91, 2022 marked a record year for data centre investment.
After looking at data sourced from the Inframation platform, Linklaters’ experts have found that deal value and volume levels look to be in line with what was seen last year.
While there’s been economic headwinds and a slowdown of deals generally, the law firm’s findings highlight the importance of data centres amid the continued adoption and advancement of technologies, not least artificial intelligence.
David Martin, partner and co-head of Linklaters’ digital infrastructure offering, said: “Our research has underlined the popularity and critical nature of data centres and this trend is building momentum.
“One recurring theme throughout the data is the role of financial sponsors who have always been attracted to data centres due the increasing criticality of digital infrastructure and strong financial returns.
“Looking to the remainder of 2023 and into 2024, we are at an interesting junction as many of the data centres are coming to the end of their five-to-seven-year cycle.
“We should expect to see increasingly high volumes of deal activity within this space as strong macro trends, including cloud computing and AI continue and sponsors look to spin out assets or sell off shares to stabilise and attract new investors.”
The law firm found that, as of 30 September 2023, $80bn (£64bn~) has been invested in the global digitalinfrastructure sector, with $16bn (£12bn~) being invested in data centre-related deals.
According to Linklaters, data centre-related deals have consistently grown over the last few years, with a compounded annual growth of 32% from 2017 to 2022.
In particular, Europe has seen the largest number of data centre deals both last year and so far this year, the law firm found. Also, that it’s seen its share in data centre transaction value rise from 6% in 2022 to 36% in 2023.
Speaking on data centre investment, AI, and Europe, Julian Cunningham-Day, partner and co-head of Linklaters’ digital infrastructure offering, commented: “The increasing adoption of AI and cloud services is making data storage ever more critical while the proliferation of IoT devices and streaming services is driving demand for edge data centres.
“Many national governments have backed the development of the sector and encouraged record levels of investment, which is one of the key drivers behind the continued resilience and levels of investment in Europe, despite the challenging market conditions which have impacted M&A in some sectors.”
Glasgow, North Ayrshire, and the Borderlands Region have received a total of nearly £11 million in UK Governmentfunding to help establish them as 5G Innovation Regions.
The regions are three out of ten locations across the UK receiving government investment, as part of a £36m programme to drive the development and adoption of 5G and other advanced wireless technologies.
The Glasgow City Region will receive £3.2m to deliver a health- and social care-focussed project that will use IoT and smart city applications to make public services better.
Glasgow’s project specifically aims to support the monitoring and maintenance of assets, creating environmentally-friendly social housing, and improving the monitoring of health and social care services.
North Ayrshire Council, meanwhile, will use £3.8m to build new Regional Strategic Wireless Innovation Hubs to accelerate the adoption of digital and wireless technologies in manufacturing.
Cumberland Council will use £3.8m across the Borderlands Region — which includes Dumfries and Galloway and the Scottish Borders — to use 5G and advanced wireless tech to support the tourist economy, protect the environment, and aid local business.
Designed to boost innovation in a variety of sectors, the 5G Innovation Regions programme is a commitment from the government’s Wireless Infrastructure Strategy.
The Strategy, published in April this year, set out a vision for locations across the UK to take advantage of the beneficial effect that advanced wireless connectivity and digitaltechnologies can provide.
Coinciding with the innovation programme, a Digital Infrastructure Advisory Group has also been launched. The group will provide a platform for regions to articulate challenges, discuss opportunities, and make policy recommendations to the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT).
Speaking on the funding, John Lamont, the UK Government minister for Scotland, said: “The UK government is committed to ensuring the potential of 5G is felt across the UK and I am delighted that Glasgow City Council, North Ayrshire Council and the Borderlands Region will between them receive almost £11 million to help with this.
“Scotland has a history of being at the forefront of innovation and technology and this funding will make sure this remains the case.
“All the areas will use this technology to help people’s lives, Glasgow through improving the monitoring of health and social care services, North Ayrshire will accelerate the adoption of digital and wireless technologies and the Borderlands Region will help increase tourism.”
Sir John Whittingdale, minister of data and digital infrastructure, also commented: “We’re channelling millions into local areas to unlock the potential of cutting-edge 5G wireless and digital technologies which will reshape our public services, drive economic growth and boost innovation.
“This new fund will give local areas from across the country the opportunity to be at the forefront of Britain’s world-leading 5G revolution.
“For instance, by using 5G for farming and creating science parks, we’re not just helping local communities, but also encouraging new ideas all over the UK. This is more than just linking smartphones. It’s about using powerful digital connections to transform various sectors in the economy and the public sector throughout the entire country.”
One of the last times DIGIT reported on the intersection of 5G and Scotland was last month, when the Scotland 5G Centre (S5GC) began offering the Highlands and Islands a free 5G Innovation Testbed service.
S5GC’s advice and its pop-up networks are available to organisations looking to explore how 5G solutions can significantly improve their business.
The study discovered that a higher proportion of people thought white faces generated by artificial intelligence were human than photos of actual people.
The same, however, wasn’t true for images of people of colour. Dr Amy Dawel, the senior author of the paper, said that the reason for the discrepancy is that AI algorithms are trained disproportionately on white faces.
“If White AI faces are consistently perceived as more realistic, this technology could have serious implications for people of colour by ultimately reinforcing racial biases online,” explained Dr Dawel.
“This problem is already apparent in current AI technologies that are being used to create professional-looking headshots. When used for people of colour, the AI is altering their skin and eye colour to those of White people.”
The researchers also found that people often don’t realise they’re being fooled, highlighting the sheer effectiveness of AI’s image-making capabilities.
“Concerningly, people who thought that the AI faces were real most often were paradoxically the most confident their judgements were correct,” said Elizabeth Miller, study co-author and PhD candidate at the Australian National University.
“This means people who are mistaking AI imposters for real people don’t know they are being tricked.”
Although there are physical differences between real faces and ones that are generated by AI, people tend to misinterpret them, Dr Dawel noted. “For example, White AI faces tend to be more in-proportion and people mistake this as a sign of humanness.
“However, we can’t rely on these physical cues for long. AI technology is advancing so quickly that the differences between AI and human faces will probably disappear soon.”
In response to the numerous, serious implications of this — not least concerning cyber-crime — the researchers have called for increased transparency around AI and its development.
“AI technology can’t become sectioned off so only tech companies know what’s going on behind the scenes. There needs to be greater transparency around AI so researchers and civil society can identify issues before they become a major problem,” Dr Dawel said.
Further, the researchers advocated for greater public awareness on the issue as well as actionable tools, thereby helping to reduce the risks posed by the technology.
“Given that humans can no longer detect AI faces, society needs tools that can accurately identify AI imposters,” Dr Dawel advised.
“Educating people about the perceived realism of AI faces could help make the public appropriately sceptical about the images they’re seeing online.”
Dr Clare Sutherland, who also co-authored the paper, added: “As the world changes extremely rapidly with the introduction of AI, it’s critical that we make sure that no one is left behind or disadvantaged in any way – whether due to their ethnicity, gender, age, or any other protected characteristic.”
While, in the traditional sense, the verb “hallucinate” means to see, hear, feel, or smell something that does not exist, another meaning of the word has been increasingly used in a year where AI has fully captured the public’s imagination.
When artificial intelligence produces false information, it “hallucinates.” Although the response may initially appear to be true to those without prior knowledge on the subject, the information given is objectively incorrect.
Accompanying the recently-updated meaning of “hallucinate” in the Cambridge Dictionary are some examples for how it can be used in practice, such as “The latest version of the chatbot is greatly improved but it will still hallucinate facts.”
While its lexicographers have incorporated other AI-related definitions into the dictionary over 2023 — including “generative AI” — the team decided on “hallucinate” as the Word of the Year due to the representative nature of it.
“The new meaning gets to the heart of why people are talking about AI,” they wrote on the Word of the Year announcement page. “Generative AI is a powerful tool but one we’re all still learning how to interact with safely and effectively – this means being aware of both its potential strengths and its current weaknesses.”
Hallucinations are a significant weakness of AI at present. As an example, and back in February, Google demonstrated the abilities of Bard, its ChatGPT competitor. However, the tool hallucinated facts about the James Webb Space Telescope. After the mistake was noticed, it then led Alphabet, Google’s parent company, to lose around $100 billion in value.
Speaking on “hallucinations” as a term, Dr Henry Shevlin, an AI ethicist and philosopher based at the University of Cambridge, remarked that “It’s striking to me that of all the words we could have collectively decided on to describe the mistakes that large language models make, we went with ‘hallucinate,’ when existing computer-specific terms like ‘glitches’ or ‘bugs’ could have perfectly sufficed.
“Perhaps we chose this vivid psychological verb because it’s so easy to anthropomorphise these systems, treating them as if they have minds of their own. Already, many people think of ChatGPT as closer to a coworker, rather than just another app or utility.”
Earlier today, DIGIT reported on the announcement that OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has paused new users from subscribing to its paid service following a new surge in demand. The increase in usage comes after OpenAI’s developer conference, DevDay, which was held last week.
At the conference, the company revealed new upgrades and offerings, including “GPTs” — custom versions of the chatbot which users can create themselves for a specific purpose. The tailored versions of ChatGPT, which can be created for aims like generating cooking recipes or helping troubleshoot common tech issues, can also be shared publicly through the upcoming GPT Store.
People who share their GPTs through the GPT Store are also set to earn money from their creations, based on usage.
Sam Altman, the firm’s chief executive, announced the decision to temporarily suspend new ChatGPT Plus subscriptions in a post on X.
In the post, Altman mentioned that after OpenAI’s developer conference last week, called DevDay, there was an escalation in usage which exceeded capacity.
During the conference, the artificial intelligence company revealed new upgrades and offerings, including “GPTs” — custom versions of the chatbot which users can create themselves for a specific purpose.
The tailored versions of ChatGPT, which can be created for aims like generating cooking recipes or helping troubleshoot common tech issues, can also be shared publicly through the upcoming GPT Store.
People who share their GPTs through the GPT Store are also set to earn money from their creations, based on usage.
While the company has provisionally paused signups in light of the new surge in demand, Altman said in his post that users can be notified within the app itself when subscriptions reopen.
we are pausing new ChatGPT Plus sign-ups for a bit 🙁
the surge in usage post devday has exceeded our capacity and we want to make sure everyone has a great experience.
you can still sign-up to be notified within the app when subs reopen.
The last two weeks have been eventful ones for OpenAI, not just because of its DevDay conference, the announcements, and the increased usage of ChatGPT.
In the middle of last week, the company faced intermittent outages due to an issue which resembled a DDoS attack, in which an adversary attempts to disrupt traffic to a site and/or services.
Prior to the outages, one of the last times DIGIT covered OpenAI and ChatGPT was in September.
Towards the end of the month, it was revealed that ChatGPT could once again browse the internet, meaning that it was no longer limited to the data it had been trained on, which didn’t go past 2021.
Underpinned by Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, the ability to have ChatGPT browse the internet was first launched as a beta feature for users in May.
However, the feature was paused just two months later over concerns on how it could be used to circumvent paywalled content.
Altman reposted the relaunch announcement via his X account, adding: “we are so back.”
Scully started in his tech and digital economy minister role (under secretary of state) when the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) was established by prime minister Rishi Sunak back in February.
During his nine-month tenure, Scully worked on initiatives and policies including the Online Safety Bill and the National Semiconductor Strategy, and was co-chair of the Digital Skills Council. He had also served as minister for London since 2020.
In an X thread, where he outlined examples of the work he’s accomplished in both his tech minister role and other previous positions, Scully wrote that “the best thing I’ll ever do in politics was to start the statutory inquiry into the Horizon scandal and begin the long road for the original 555 postmasters to get compensation.”
The Horizon scandal resulted in hundreds of post office operators being wrongfully prosecuted for theft, fraud, and false accounting due to faulty software.
Scully is not the only minister to have left DSIT amid the reshuffle. George Freeman, who was the minister of state for DSIT between 7 February and 13 November 2023, has resigned.
In a letter to Sunak announcing his departure, Freeman stated that “the time has come for me to focus on my health, family wellbeing and life beyond the front bench.”
In the letter to Sunak, Freeman wrote that “It has been an honour and privilege to have been able to bring my professional career expertise in bioscience and technology venture financing to a number of frontline science and technology roles in Government, and to help you and successive Prime Ministers put S+T at the heart of our country’s economic and geopolitical missions.”
Andrew Griffith has since been appointed minister of state for DSIT. He was previously economic secretary to the Treasury, and before that financial secretary to the Treasury.
Meanwhile, Saqib Bhatti has also been appointed as under secretary of state at DSIT. Bhatti has been the vice chairman of the Conservative Party for business since September 2022.
FarrPoint, the Edinburgh-headquartered connectivity specialist, has announced the opening of its second overseas office following a new partnership with US consultancy firm, Vernonburg Group.
The two companies are set to combine their expertise and resources to create a “one-stop-shop” of support services, helping US state and territorial governments deliver affordable high-speed broadband to their citizens.
The Scots business has opened its new office in Boston, Massachusetts. Services on offer will include programme design, connectivity mapping, procurement exercises, and deployment assurance. This will leverage funding across multiple broadband programmes, including the Broadband Equity Access and Development (BEAD) programme.
Founded in 2006, FarrPoint first expanded overseas with the opening of a Canadian office and subsidiary in early 2020. The firm is currently advising UK and Canadian governments on broadband and infrastructure programmes, including the UK’s nationwide Project Gigabit investment.
Vernonburg Group advises governments, internet service providers, connectivity hardware and solution providers, and non-profits on various aspects of closing the digital divide. This includes digital equity programme design and implementation, large-scale project feasibilities, broadband mapping and economic modelling, and more.
Dr Andrew Muir, CEO and founder of FarrPoint, said: “Improved digital connectivity is vital to support growing economic activity and sustain communities, and that’s equally true on both sides of the Atlantic.
“Our extensive experience in the UK and Canada stands us in good stead to support the US market. We’ve accumulated a wealth of knowledge on the selection of broadband suppliers through major procurement programmes, together with the deployment management that follows.
“Signing a contract is not the end of the job and both grant holders and supplier recipients need to be prepared for the challenges of rollout.
“Our knowledge and experience of these stages will help US states and territories meet these challenges ahead. Partnering with Vernonburg Group will allow us to deliver our breadth of experience to new US clients.”
Paul Garnett, CEO and founder of Vernonburg Group, commented: “Affordable high-speed internet connectivity is now essential to everyday life.
“Unprecedented funding for broadband has created a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to bring affordable high-speed connectivity to every unserved and underserved household in the United States, as well as programs that increase adoption of digital services.
“With this funding, universal and affordable high-speed connectivity can be achieved.
“We are excited to partner with FarrPoint and leverage our combined expertise to help state and territorial governments get the most out of available broadband funds.”
The last time DIGIT covered FarrPoint was last month, following the publication of its Digital Connectivity Readiness Index (DCRI). The Index revealed that, in the UK, Scotland is lagging behind England and Northern Ireland in terms of connectivity preparedness.
With its new Annual Review, the security organisation stated that the UK needs to accelerate work to keep pace with the changing threats posed to key sectors, including water, electricity, communications, transport and financial networks, and internet connectivity.
Specifically, over the last year, the NCSC has observed the emergence of “a new class of cyber adversary” in the form of state-aligned actors — including those from Russia, China, and Iran — who are ideologically motivated, and whose aims mainly revolve around having a disruptive or destructive impact.
For instance, in May this year, and alongside international security agencies, the NCSC issued advice to help organisations involved with critical national infrastructure more readily detect state-sponsored activity from China.
Similarly, at the start of the year, in January, the NCSC advised caution regarding phishing attacks from cyber-actors in Russia and Iran, who were targeting specific sectors and individuals — such as government organisations, defence, academia, and politicians — as to gain access to sensitive information.
Concerning the resiliency of the UK’s critical national infrastructure, and how infrastructure is becoming an increasingly attractive target for cyber-actors, the Review noted that “The threat is evolving. While we are making progress building resilience in our most critical sectors, we aren’t where we need to be.
“We will continue to work with partners across government, industry and regulators to accelerate this work and keep pace with the changing threat, including tracking their resilience in line with targets set out by the Deputy Prime Minister.”
The Annual Review also underscored the way in which artificial intelligence — which has exploded in usage over the last year — can accelerate and enhance activities from adversaries through the increased accessibility and speed that’s offered. The NCSC shared that there’s “now a significant amount of activity across the NCSC and wider government to assess and respond to the potential threats and risk posed by AI.”
It also highlighted how readily-available advanced technologies and tactics can be utilised by adversaries to wreak havoc and disruption on democracy. With upcoming elections in the UK and US, among other western countries, the NCSC stipulated that the UK and its allies can’t be complacent to the threat of foreign interference for influencing democratic processes.
Speaking on this year’s Annual Review, Lindy Cameron, the chief executive of the NCSC, remarked: “The last year has seen a significant evolution in the cyber threat to the UK – not least because of Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine but also from the availability and capability of emerging tech.
“As our Annual Review shows, the NCSC and our partners have supported government, the public and private sector, citizens, and organisations of all sizes across the UK to raise awareness of the cyber threats and improve our collective resilience.
“Beyond the present challenges, we are very aware of the threats on the horizon, including rapid advancements in tech and the growing market for cyber capabilities. We are committed to facing those head on and keeping the UK at the forefront of cyber security.”
According to the latest Small Business Index from the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), more than a third of small IT companies say that a lack of skilled staff is stifling growth.
The Small Business Index survey for the third quarter of 2023, sponsored by Google, posed a series of questions to 816 small business owners and sole traders across myriad sectors.
The survey found that 38% of small IT businesses cite the skills gap as a significant hurdle for growth, which is higher than businesses situated in industries such as manufacturing (28%), professional and technical activities (23%), and wholesale and retail (14%).
To help bridge the digital skills gap, the Federation has advocated that the UK government ensure all schools provide GCSE and A-Level computer science or ICT courses.
It also wants the government to ensure that skills bootcamps continue to play a crucial role in helping increase digital skills, seeing as they’re used by 76% of small firms.
Further, the group wants to see the government make training in new skills tax deductible for the self-employed, allowing people to pivot into new areas of business, and for the government to continue covering 95% of apprentice training costs for small businesses.
Tina McKenzie, FSB policy and advocacy chair, remarked: “Small businesses are eager to grow but many find themselves at a standstill, with skills shortages putting a brake on their ambitions. At a time where the economy needs it the most, firms are left hamstrung.”
“As we shift to the digital age, too, it’s essential to support the self-employed to branch out and upskill without being held back by the tax system,” McKenzie also noted.
“One of the main things we hear from our members is how difficult it is to recruit at all skills levels, which is why we need to invest in lifelong learning. This cannot happen overnight but will unfold over time and needs supply-side reforms to make it work.
“The future of our economy relies on skills. Unless we create pathways for small businesses to tap into a readily available talent pool, the economy is at risk. This is more than just patching over a hole in the ceiling – it’s about empowering a workforce that can propel the economy forward.”
Relatedly, earlier this month, DIGIT covered separate research from ServiceNow, the digital workflow company, regarding the professional world’s desire for AI and coding to be compulsory within curriculums.
The firm’s research revealed that the majority of UK workers (73%) agree that AI and coding should be mandatory in formal education, providing young people with the digital skills that they may need for their future career.
Further, and more generally, almost three quarters (72%) feel there should be a standardised qualification for digital skills as to instil trust in employers they’re recruiting the right talent.
The new advisory board will be chaired by Colin Robertson CBE, formerly chief executive of Alexander Dennis Limited and now chair/founder of Robertson Campbell Investments. Colin also holds numerous other executive and non-executive chair roles. Joining Colin are Simon Russell and John Thomson.
Simon was formerly global technology partner/managing director with various investment banks including Nomura, Macquarie and PwC. He now leads his own consultancy practice and sits on numerous boards in a chair/non-executive capacity.
John, formerly based in Singapore, was a partner at 3i Asia for many years and brings vast direct investing insights alongside an outstanding network across Asia.
Also sitting on the new advisory board will be Stuart McKee, chair at Kelvin Capital. Stuart was formerly global head of corporate finance at PwC and now sits on a number of boards and advisory boards across a variety of sectors.
Stuart McKee commented: “Colin, Simon and John bring many years of senior level experience working in global markets and across many sectors.
“As part of our planned programme of developments to provide greater support to existing and prospective investee companies, their combined expertise across operational excellence, deep sector insight, supply chain management and accessing funding, acquisition targets and exit routes through personal geographically diverse networks will be a significant next step in the Kelvin Capital story.”
Colin Robertson CBE remarked: “Kelvin Capital has already built a solid reputation for investing in disruptive or pioneering technologies with global ambitions so I’m delighted to be appointed to chair its advisory board, with Simon and John, to support existing portfolio companies, and to assist future investments too.”
The five portfolio companies that received investment were: the agritechs Dyneval, WellFish Diagnostics, and Peacock Technology, as well as behavioural science and technology firm KultraLab, and eBike motor designer and manufacturer FreeFlow Technologies.
The CIPD’s Labour Market Outlook is a quarterly survey of more than 2,000 employers across the UK — over 100 in Scotland — on their pay, hiring, and redundancy intentions. This quarter’s report also explored the use of generative AI in organisations.
With skills shortages continuing to persist across Scotland, organisations are increasingly turning to technology by introducing or increasing automation to help bridge the gap.
However, the Outlook discovered that over a third (36%) of Scottish employers see privacy and security concerns as potential drawbacks to the use of GenAI. Only a fifth (20%) don’t think there are any potential drawbacks to their organisation from its usage.
It also revealed that 13% of Scottish employers have banned generative artificial intelligence being used, while a further 5% have plans to do similarly.
In response, the CIPD has urged employers to look at the benefits of AI, or risk being outpaced by the technology.
Marek Zemanik, senior public policy adviser (Scotland and Northern Ireland) at the CIPD, said: “Generative AI is here and is already changing the world of work, but our research shows a lot of Scottish employers are still hesitant to introduce it. Indeed, many may not even be aware that their employees are using it.
“Organisations need to embrace the opportunities of AI, while understanding the risks. This will ensure responsible and ethical use and understanding potential impacts on workforces, jobs and skills. Managed well, it stands to bring efficiency and productivity gains to many roles.
“Employers who are not proactive will soon find themselves outpaced by developments as this technology will continue to progress and reach into new areas of our working lives.”
Regarding those opportunities, two in five (41%) Scottish employers see increased organisational productivity and efficiency as generative AI-propelled advantages, and a third (31%) see enhanced decision-making and cost savings (30%) as benefits.
While GenAI is increasingly being used by employers to help plug the skills gap, the Outlook also showed that the majority in the UK believe the technology won’t impact their organisation’s employment of full-time staff.
Specifically, over half (53%) who expect their organisation to introduce generative AI anticipate no change in the number of full-time staff employed as a result of introducing it over the next five years.
Meanwhile, a quarter (25%) think generative AI will in fact lead to more full-time jobs, and a slightly lower number (23%) think it will decrease the number of full-time roles.
Regarding employment more generally, the Outlook also revealed that 42% of Scottish employers report hard-to-fill vacancies, and that six in ten (64%) Scottish employers are planning to recruit in the next three months.
According to the latest forecast from Gartner, the technological research and consulting firm, IT spending in Europe is projected to total $1.1 trillion (£900b~) in 2024. This figure marks a 9.3% increase from 2023.
In terms of where European CIOs are expected to increase spending next year, software and IT services represent the largest two areas. Software spending is being forecasted to grow by 14.5% next year to around $241b (£197b~), with IT services spending to increase by 11.8% to $427b (£349b~).
Gartner cited some of the growth in IT services spending as an outcome of talent shortages in European IT departments. “CIOs do not have the employees nor the talents to do all the work required and turn to IT services firms to fill in the gaps,” noted John-David Lovelock, VP analyst at Gartner.
The segments of software and IT services are followed by data centre systems with a projected 8% growth in spending to $49b (£40b~), devices with 4.6% growth to $131b (£107b)~, and communications services with 4.4% growth to $297b (£243b~).
Gartner also noted that, while there is sufficient spending within data centre markets to maintain the existing on-premises data centres, new spending continues to skew toward cloud options, which is expected to grow 27% in Europe in 2024.
Further, although artificial intelligence (AI) is a priority for CIOs both this year and next, it’s not yet a spending priority.
In terms of geographic breakdown, the top three most mature countries in Europe are set to represent 51% of total IT spending in Europe in 2024. IT spending in the UK, Germany, and France is projected to total $588 billion (£456b~) in 2024, up 9.8% from 2023.
However, among the international monetary fund (IMF) developing countries (Hungary and Poland), IT spending is estimated to total $32.3b (£26b~) in 2024, up 9.2% from 2023.
“Despite a conflated economic situation, IT spending in Europe continues to be recession-proof,” commented Lovelock.
“CIOs in Europe who pursued the “growth at all costs” strategy for over a decade, are now shifting the emphasis of ongoing IT projects toward cost control, efficiencies and automation, while curtailing IT initiatives with longer ROIs.”
Last month, Gartner also forecasted that worldwide IT spending will total $5.1 trillion (£4.1t~) in 2024, an increase of 8% from 2023.
The resource, “Managing smart city governance,” is described as a playbook of recommendations that can be implemented to improve urban life via technology.
It offers guidance to local and regional governments leading smart city projects, with examples including real-time monitoring of traffic data.
It also provides insight into how cities have been dealing with some smart tech’s ethical, societal, and environmental implications.
The final publication draws on examples from Scotland, including the collaborative Scottish Cities Alliance, the launch of the Scottish Digital Academy, and Glasgow’s Participatory Budgeting Evaluation Toolkit.
As well as Edinburgh Napier University, the smart city playbook was jointly produced by the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), CAF – Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean, and Tallinn University of Technology.
Professor Luca Mora and Dr Paolo Gerli, both from Napier’s Business School, led the research team behind the playbook. Mora presented the final document to the Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona this week.
Speaking on the resource, Mora commented: “This playbook draws together evidence-based advice, offering what we hope will be guidance that makes a positive difference around the world.
“Digital technology offers many opportunities for leaders of local and municipal governments – and it could revolutionise the quality of life for people who live in urban areas.
“The potential of these technologies is almost limitless, so it is important that they are put in place strategically and collaboratively to make the most of them.”
The Scottish Cities Alliance, cited in the playbook, is a partnership between the Scottish Government and eight cities — Glasgow, Dundee, Dunfermline, Perth, Stirling, Aberdeen, Inverness, and Edinburgh.
Together, the Alliance focuses on smart technologies, infrastructure, and investment promotion, in a bid to drive innovation, create new business and employment opportunities, and also improve city services.
At the end of last year, Edinburgh’s smart City Operations Centre officially opened. It receives real-time data from the CCTV network 24/7, and is integrated with smart technologies. It was created to help improve traffic flow, transport infrastructure and city planning, as well as public safety.
Cammy Day, leader of Edinburgh Council, commented at the time: “We’ve completely overhauled the technology we use within the control centre and across the city – replacing outdated analogue cameras with intelligent internet-enabled devices. This means we can analyse events and traffic in real time.
“Edinburgh is fast becoming an example of a truly smart city and its [sic] thanks to trailblazing projects like this.
“We’re also rolling out waste and housing sensors, innovative digital learning opportunities in schools, while exploring an urban traffic management control system which is a tool for monitoring traffic flow.”
New laws introduced into Parliament will “put safety at the heart of the roll-out of self-driving vehicle technology,” the UK government has said.
As announced in the recent King’s Speech, the aim of the the government’s Automated Vehicles (AV) Bill is to deliver one of the most comprehensive legal frameworks of its kind for self-driving vehicles.
The Bill will set the safety threshold for self-driving vehicles in law, lay out clear liability for the user, and establish an in-use regulatory scheme to monitor the ongoing safety of these vehicles.
Specifically, all self-driving vehicles will be required to undergo robust safety testing before they are permitted to drive on UK roads. Companies will also have ongoing obligations to keep their vehicles safe and ensure that they continue to drive in accordance with British laws.
Regarding the important matter of legal liability, every authorised self-driving vehicle will have a corresponding Authorised Self-Driving Entity – often the manufacturer – which will be responsible for the behaviour of the vehicle when self-driving. This will protect “users from being unfairly held accountable,” said the government.
The Bill will also prohibit misleading market practices, including around using ambiguous terminology in advertising material around whether their vehicles classify as self driving. Regulations under the Bill will set out specific terminology and symbols which will be reserved for marketing authorised self-driving vehicles. Unauthorised and improper use of this terminology will be against the law and a criminal offence.
The laws implement recommendations of the review of self-driving vehicle regulation, carried out by the Law Commission of England and Wales and the Scottish Law Commission. The review brings together over 4 years of legal work, 3 rounds of public consultation, and hundreds of responses from a range of organisations and individuals.
The Bill comes amid wider government funding and support for trials of self-driving technologies in the UK, like the £66 million Commercialising Connected and Automated Mobility fund. The fund is helping support 20 projects in nearly 50 organisations to develop prototype passenger and logistics self-driving services.
Transport secretary, Mark Harper, said: “Our new Bill ensures safety is at the heart of our plans to see self-driving vehicles on our roads, making the UK a great place to develop this technology.
“We have the opportunity to put the UK at the forefront of a fast-growing, multi-billion-pound industry by providing the clarity and certainty for business to develop and invest in this exciting technology.
Alex Kendall, co-founder and CEO of Wayve, a company “pioneering an AI-centric approach to self-driving,” also commented: “By setting out a clear path to commercialisation, new primary legislation for self-driving vehicles gives us the confidence to continue investing in research and development and growing our talent base here in the UK.
“We look forward to continuing to work with the government to cement the UK’s role as a global centre of excellence for self-driving technology that will make our roads safer and unlock new growth.”
Six of the UK’s largest energy suppliers, including Scottish Power and SSE, will have to pay out a combined sum of £10.8 million after missing their annual smart meter installation targets.
British Gas, OVO, Bulb, E.ON, Scottish Power, and SSE fell short of the government-set installation targets for 2022. Between them, there was a shortage of over a million smart meter installations.
As a result, the six energy companies have voluntarily agreed to pay £10.8m into the Energy Industry Voluntary Redress Fund (EIVRF), used to help consumers most at risk from cold homes and high energy bills.
Paying the most into the fund is British Gas at £3.37 million, followed by OVO at £2.39m and Bulb at £1.83m. E.ON will pay £1.72m, Scottish Power £1.24m, and SSE £252,000.
The UK government introduced the four-year smart Meter Targets Framework in January last year, giving energy firms prescriptive targets for installations. Ofgem, the industry regulator, monitors company progress.
Cathryn Scott, director of enforcement and emerging issues at Ofgem, commented: “The installation of smart meters is a vital step in the modernisation of our energy system and the path to net zero by 2050.
“Smart meters give customers better information about their energy usage helping them budget and control their costs.”
Last month, the government’s Public Accounts Committee said the country’s smart meter rollout progress is too slow, and not enough has been done to get the public on board.
However, the Committee heard energy suppliers are feeling the pressure of imposed targets, which can translate into them putting pressure on the general public to install, putting consumers off.
Making the situation more difficult is technology. The Committee noted around 3 million (9%) of smart meters aren’t working properly as of March 2023.
Components for an estimated seven million smart meters will also need to be replaced, as they’ll lose functionality when 2G and 3G networks are shut down.
As of June, over 33 million smart and advanced meters have been installed in British homes and businesses, which represents 58% of all meters in the UK.
Scottish Enterprise, the national economic development agency, has supported the highest-ever number of academic spinouts via its High Growth Spinout Program (HGSP), figures for the 2022-23 financial year reveal.
Scottish Enterprise supports research teams to commercialise ideas and projects, helping to transform them into commercial businesses. In total, 33 research teams were supported by the development agency in FY22/23, receiving £2.06 million in grant funding.
The projects come from research institutions including the universities of Strathclyde, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Glasgow, Heriot-Watt, Napier, and the James Hutton Institute.
Speaking on HGSP and the record number, Adrian Gillespie, chief executive of Scottish Enterprise, said: “The HGSP supports brilliant academics to turn their ideas into commercial reality, creating high growth companies for the future.
“We are delighted that it has been a record year as spinouts are vital for Scotland’s economy, and our academic researchers play a pivotal role in tackling global challenges in areas such as climate change, energy and health.”
Scottish Enterprise also supported the creation of six new spinout companies, with four of these going on to receive tailored wrap-around support to help further their scaling journey.
The six companies that spun out in FY22/23 are:
Fitabeo Therapeutics, the specialty pharmaceutical company (University of Strathclyde).
Eye to the Future, the business supporting eyecare professionals through retinal imaging technology (Universities of Edinburgh and Dundee).
Agrecalc, creators of a tool for carbon emission calculation, benchmarking, and mitigation (Scotland’s Rural College – SRUC).
Albasense, a company using photonics-based imaging and sensing techniques to provide solutions for industries where miniaturised, low-cost measurement is required (University of the West of Scotland).
TauProbes, the company manufacturing tungsten semiconductor test probes (University of Glasgow).
Clyde Hydrogen Systems, creators of technology to help build systems for green hydrogen production at scale (University of Glasgow).
Eye to the Future’s retinal imaging technology comes from a collaborative project by the universities of Edinburgh and Dundee.
CEO and co-founder David Bowie commented: “The continuation of support from all areas of SE – including HGV and Scottish Development International – has been fantastic and a real motivator for our rockstar team who see this as validation of what we’re doing as a business.
“As we continue to push boundaries in all aspects of our company, we always aim to be the best of the best and we can only achieve this thanks to the support we receive.
Innovation minister Richard Lochhead also remarked: “I congratulate Scottish Enterprise for such impressive results in ensuring through this programme that our world-leading universities have a clear pathway to market.
“Close working between government, industry and universities is central to the Scottish Government’s National Innovation Strategy to maximise our research potential and bring about new products and businesses which benefit society and our economy.
“We are committed to working with our universities to enhance the role they play. This is why the First Minister recently announced a ten-year Entrepreneurial Campus plan to strengthen global networks and support more university startup businesses.”
Yesterday, DIGIT covered the news that Scottish Enterprise has entered an agreement with Innovate UK, the country’s innovation agency, to deliver “further and faster” support and access to funding to help accelerate Scottish business innovation.
Also this week, it was announced that in a bid to help strengthen Scotland’s green heat supply chain, Scottish Enterprise awarded more than £750,000 to 16 businesses. The recipients are developing technologies, products, or processes that will help support the transition to low carbon heat or improve the thermal performance of buildings.
The Cyber and Fraud Centre – Scotland is a not-for-profit, employee-first organisation helping Scottish organisations to be as resilient as they can be against fraud and cyber-crime.
The Centre’s event will take place at Aberdeen’s One Tech Hub on the 9th of November, as part of TechFest 2023. It will give an insight into building a cybersecurity strategy, and offer resources for creating an incident response plan and advice on how to mitigate a cyber-attack.
Attendees will also get the chance to partake in an ‘Exercise-in-the-Box’ scenario, putting their knowledge into practice and learning how to address gaps in their companies’ cybersecurity plans. This will then be followed by a networking session.
Last year’s National Cyber Security Centre annual review discovered that over two million instances of cyber-related fraud took place in the UK during the 12 months leading to March 2022.
Jude McCorry, CEO of Cyber and Fraud Centre – Scotland, said: “Every week we’re seeing companies find themselves victims of ransomware and cybersecurity attacks.
“Our Cyber Roadshow is coming to Aberdeen to help organisations and charities learn how best to preserve their cyber integrity, taking into account their unique circumstances as public and third-sector bodies.
“We’ll also provide tools for responding to a cyber-attack, should the worst happen, and there is a wide range of resources available on our website and via CyberScotland, as well as free training that can help organisations protect themselves against future cyber-attacks.”
The Cyber and Fraud Centre also runs an Incident Response Helpline for any organisation concerned they have fallen victim to cyber-crime which can be contacted on 0800 1670 623. The helpline is run in partnership with the Scottish Government and Police Scotland with a network of trusted third-party companies that provide assistance.
The approved plans mark a new milestone in preparation for the refurbishment of the former City of Glasgow College, bringing the Grade B-listed building back into use following a 10-year period of vacancy.
The redeveloped Met Tower, which is scheduled to open in Winter 2025, will serve as a new technology and digital hub in the heart of the city centre and within the Glasgow City Innovation District. With its £60m investment into the project, Bruntwood SciTech will also create a new 10 storey tower which will interconnect with the building.
The plans outline how the existing 110,000 sq ft 14-storey Met Tower will be redeveloped to offer 2-40 person serviced offices and larger leased office space, accompanied with multiple meeting rooms including a 16-person boardroom, breakout spaces, a wellness and treatment room, a grab and go cafe, and a multi-faith room.
The 95,000 sq ft new 10 storey tower will offer medium-large office spaces, along with breakout space opening out into the new plaza, a grab and go cafe, speed gates for additional security, a secondary retail space, and a roof terrace, with direct access into Met Tower’s facilities.
Enabling works on the site are underway and are set to continue for the remainder of 2023, with construction work expected to commence on Met Tower from spring next year.
Both buildings have been designed in line with the UKGBC and LETI net zero carbon targets for operational and embodied carbon. The new tower is set to be net zero carbon in construction, and both buildings are to be net zero operationally in their shared spaces.
Businesses locating to the new cluster will gain access to Bruntwood SciTech’s UK-wide network, giving them the opportunity to collaborate with a 1100-strong community of tech and science businesses, as well as specialist support which provides access to STEM talent, new markets, funding and finance support, and professional services advice.
The new hub will join the rapidly scaling science and tech sector in Glasgow, which is the second fastest-growing area in the UK for venture capital investment.
Daron Williams, building consultancy director at Bruntwood SciTech, said: “Glasgow is already on its way to becoming a world-leading tech hub and one of the UK’s fastest growing clusters, and with approval of our plans now confirmed we’re very much looking forward to Met Tower becoming the beacon for the tech community in the city.
“We’re proud to be playing our part in galvanising the tech momentum in this city and couldn’t be better placed to do so in the heart of the city centre and Innovation District – surrounded by two brilliant universities, an exceptional College, and several established alternative training providers who will ensure that the businesses who locate to Met Tower can tap into a strong, highly skilled talent pool.”
Councillor Susan Aitken, leader of Glasgow City Council, added: “Bruntwood SciTech’s £60 million investment in the Met Tower is a huge vote of confidence in Glasgow’s growing reputation as an international centre of innovation, creativity and opportunity. It also recognises our vision for a changing city centre, one with new industries and new purposes and where innovation and technology are brought into the heart of city life.
“These plans show the transformational potential of the building in a part of the city already experiencing incredible change and I’m delighted the plans have reached this major milestone. Met Tower has been a Glasgow icon for 60 years and Bruntwood SciTech’s investment in this landmark will ensure it remains a symbol of the city for generations to come.”
Due to a new agreement between Scottish Enterprise and Innovate UK, Scots businesses are set to benefit from increased support and easier access to funding.
Scotland’s national economic development agency and the UK’s innovation agency have entered a Memorandum of Understanding which aims to deliver “further and faster” assistance to Scottish businesses.
Adrian Gillespie, chief executive of Scottish Enterprise, and Indro Mukerjee, his counterpart at Innovate UK, both signed the agreement that will leverage additional innovation and investment into Scotland at the CAN DO Innovation Summit in Glasgow Science Centre.
They were joined by Susan Aitken, the chair of the Glasgow City Region Cabinet and leader of Glasgow City Council, who also revealed an Innovation Action Plan for the region, developed in partnership with Scottish Enterprise and Innovate UK.
On the agreement, Gillespie remarked: “Our collaboration with Innovate UK means business support that’s easier to access and navigate. Companies will also benefit from our greater combined focus on place-based innovation support for stronger innovation infrastructure, clusters and regions throughout Scotland.
“This will start in Glasgow City Region with the Innovation Action Plan, but the impact will be felt much wider, across Scotland’s unique assets and hubs – from energy transition in Aberdeen to tech clusters in Edinburgh.
“Working alongside Innovate UK and local authorities allows us to work smarter on transformational projects in future industries that create jobs, wellbeing and prosperity.”
This activity supports the Scottish Government’s recently launched innovation strategy ambition to become a leading innovation nation.
Mukerjee commented, saying: “I am pleased to launch our collaborative innovation action plan, which is the result of a strong and close partnerships with Glasgow City Region and Scottish Enterprise.
“It is a significant opportunity to build stronger links with Scottish regions, giving businesses greater access to our innovation ecosystem, helping them grow and succeed.”
The Glasgow City Region’s Innovation Action Plan is the first in Scotland and sets the scene for a Scottish Action Plan due to be released next year, which is to align with Scotland’s Innovation Strategy. The action plan for the region will cover six major themes: inclusive economy, ecosystem, identity, skills, investment, and infrastructure.
Specific actions include establishing innovation fellowships, creating entrepreneurial campuses, and creating an investor roadmap of Glasgow’s assets. In addition, the activities are set to complement an agreement from partners to work more closely to enhance the region’s identity as a cluster for innovation.
Aitken added: “Metropolitan Glasgow is already recognised as an innovation hub of international standing, a City Region forging a dynamic and diverse new economy.
“The Action Plan builds on our existing strengths and assets, allowing partners across all tiers of government, academia and industry to nurture a world-leading culture of creativity and invention.
“It’s a huge opportunity to generate the employment, training, and productivity outcomes our citizens need and our economy demands, the start of a new phase in our journey to become the most productive, innovative, and resilient economy across these islands by 2030.”
Header photo shows: Adrian Gillespie, chief executive of Scottish Enterprise; Susan Aitken, chair of the Glasgow City Region Cabinet and leader of Glasgow City Council; and Indro Mukerjee, chief executive officer of Innovate UK.
Amid the intensification of disinformation and hate speech online, which UNESCO has said is a “a major threat to stability and social cohesion,” the organisation has revealed its action plan for regulating social media platforms moving forward.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation’s (UNESCO) action plan is the result of a large-scale consultation process, with over 10,000 contributions from 134 countries collected over the last year and a half.
It outlines the principles that should be respected, as well as the concrete measures which should be implemented by all stakeholders, meaning governments, regulatory authorities, civil society, and the social media platforms themselves.
The measures are organised around 7 fundamental principles:
The impact on human rights becomes the compass for all decision-making, at every stage and by every stakeholder.
Independent, public regulators are set up everywhere in the world, with clearly defined roles and sufficient resources to carry out their mission.
These independent regulators work in close coordination as part of a wider network, to prevent digital companies from taking advantage of disparities between national regulations.
Content moderation is feasible and effective at scale, in all regions and in all languages.
Accountability and transparency are established in these platforms’ algorithms, which are too often geared towards maximising engagement at the cost of reliable information.
Platforms take more initiative to educate and train users to think critically.
Regulators and platforms take stronger measures during particularly sensitive moments like elections and crises.
Representatives from independent regulators have welcomed the initiative, and several of them — including in Africa and Latin America — have indicated they’re ready to begin implementing the measures.
To help its member states to apply the action plan into their own laws, UNESCO said it will offer support, not least dedicated funding, with the European Commission already pledging one million Euros towards this effort.
Speaking on the need for effective social media platform regulation, Audrey Azoulay, the UNESCO director-general, said: “Digital technology has enabled immense progress on freedom of speech.
“But social media platforms have also accelerated and amplified the spread of false information and hate speech, posing major risks to societal cohesion, peace and stability.
“To protect access to information, we must regulate these platforms without delay, while at the same time protecting freedom of expression and human rights.”
A corresponding opinion poll, conducted by IPSOS for UNESCO, surveyed over 8,000 respondents across 16 countries. It found that 85% of citizens are worried about the impact of online disinformation, especially at a time when social media platforms are often used as de-facto news and information sources.
Further, the survey also indicated that 87% believe misinformation has already had a major impact on their country’s political life, with 88% calling on governments and regulators to resolve this problem quickly.
In the UK specifically, a new bill — the Online Safety Bill — became law last month, which is aimed at making the UK “the safest place in the world to be online.” However, the bill did not include any legislation on widespread disinformation campaigns which have been growing in frequency since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Regarding disinformation, DIGIT recently covered reports from researchers that disinformation is proliferating on social media amid the ongoing Gaza conflict.
Relatedly, the European Union also recently announced that it opened an investigation into social media platform X over the “alleged spreading of illegal content and disinformation.”
Justin Peden, or “IntelCrab” — a researcher known for his fact-checking and coverage of the war in Ukraine on social media — said that “For many reasons, this is the hardest time I’ve ever had covering a crisis on here [X].”
Kick ICT Group, the North Lanarkshire-based IT services provider, has announced its latest acquisition in C2 Software. The deal, which was made for an undisclosed sum, marks Kick’s ninth acquisition in eight years.
By acquiring a specialist in Microsoft Dynamics services, Kick has grown its Dynamics division and its ability to offer more product options, services, and support for SME businesses and large enterprises.
C2 Software, from Dundee, has offered Microsoft Dynamics-related services to customers all over the UK, and was founded by Finlay Carmichael.
Carmichael is set to join the IT services provider as its head of membership sales, alongside his co-director Kirk Potter who’s to join as the head of product delivery. The two will make the move together with 15 more employees.
Kick is led by the executive team of Tom O’Hara, Alan Turnbull, Jeannie Frederick, and Andrew McDonald, and it employs 170 staff. It expects headcount to increase further following the next intake of the Kick Academy, an initiative aimed at recruiting and developing school leavers and graduates.
Speaking on the new purchase, Tom O’Hara, Kick’s CEO, said: “Over the past year, Kick has seen tremendous growth, successfully integrating our 2021 and 2022 acquisitions.
“With C2 joining us, our Dynamics team is now stronger than ever and I’m looking forward to collaborating with Finlay, Kirk, and the wider team.
“We’d also like to extend a warm welcome to our new customers from C2.”
Finlay Carmichael, director at C2, commented: “We are delighted to be joining Tom, Alan, Jeannie, Andy and the team at Kick and are looking forward to delivering innovative Microsoft Dynamics solutions to customers across the Group.”
Apart from covering Kick’s eighth deal, in which it acquired Consilium UK — the IT consultancy solutions, support, and development services business — DIGIT last reported on the IT services provider when it received a £8.7 million funding boost.
In 2021, Kick secured £8.7 million in funding from BGF, the investment company providing growth capital for small and mid-sized businesses across the UK and Ireland. It was made with the aim of encouraging the IT services provider’s upward trajectory through a mix of organic growth and acquisitions.
UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) alongside the Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (Defra) have opened a new funding award to improve the UK’s technical capability to protect plant health and biosecurity.
From today, businesses working in technological innovation and the UK horticultural, forestry, agricultural, and plant sectors can apply for a share of the up-to £800,000 funding pot to devise new biosecurity-focussed tech and solutions.
The fund will help support innovations to enhance plant health inspections both at the border and in-land, pest and disease surveillance, and management of infected commodities.
The announcement follows the launch of the Plant Biosecurity Strategy for Great Britain earlier this year. It set out a five-year vision for plant health, consisting of an action plan to secure national biosecurity, protect native species, and drive economic growth.
Speaking on the new funding, Lord Benyon, Defra minister for biosecurity, said: “Plants and trees provide £15.7bn to society annually in the UK and it is imperative that they are protected and the UK remains at the forefront of emerging technologies to do this.
“The UK is proud to be a global leader in plant biosecurity, and this new investment is part of the Government’s commitment to invest in new technologies, enhance biosecurity and boost the economy which will ensure protection for our plants and trees.”
Prof. Guy Poppy, interim executive chair of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), commented: “Healthy, robust, resilient plants are paramount to the health of our environment, food supply, economy and society.
“It is therefore mission critical that the UK invests the resource required to effectively predict, prevent, detect and manage threats to plant health.
“This exciting collaboration convenes key UK partners to help safeguard plants by tackling existing and emerging infections – key strategic ambitions for Defra and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).
“As the UK’s major public funder of plant science research, BBSRC’s investments in a portfolio of fundamental and translational research ensure we maintain a dynamic and productive national capability in plant health and biosecurity.
“Coupled with the world-leading expertise of Innovate UK in supporting businesses to maximise the full potential of their ideas and drive economic progress, this new initiative will bring together the best in academia and business to deliver innovative, sustainable, long-term solutions for UK plant health.”
In a bid to help strengthen Scotland’s green heat supply chain, Scottish Enterprise has awarded more than £750,000 to 16 businesses.
The recipients are developing technologies, products, or processes that will help support the transition to low carbon heat or improve the thermal performance of buildings.
They include Glasgow-based solar thermal technology developer Soltropy, Aberdeen-headquartered environmental tech company Kionnali Living Systems, and smart buildings solutions company Prioto Limited, also located in Glasgow, among others.
The funding is being distributed via the CAN DO Innovation Green Heat Feasibility Call in the form of grants ranging from £30,000 to £50,000.
The Call was funded by the Scottish Government through its Green Heat Innovation Support Programme, as to spur innovation and investment for the green heat market.
The CAN DO Innovation Green Heat Feasibility Call’s 16 successful applicants are:
Borvo Limited, the Banchory-based heat pump developer.
Gecko Glazing Ltd, the Edinburgh-based secondary glazing company Gecko Glazing Ltd.
Geothermal Energy Ltd, the Aberdeenshire-based engineering company.
Hutchison International, the Dundee-based smart energy solutions company.
Kionnali Living Systems, the Aberdeen-based environmental tech company.
LIND Limited, the Kinross-based developer of low carbon energy products.
Loco Home Retrofit CIC Ltd, the Glasgow-based co-operative focused on energy efficiency.
Net Zero Heat Ltd, the Glasgow-based thermal storage developer.
Objex Limited, the Edinburgh-based developer of software products for solar applications.
Prioto Limited, the Glasgow-based smart buildings solutions company.
Q-zeta Limited, the Edinburgh-based developer of low carbon energy storage technology.
Scene Connect/ZUoS, the Edinburgh-based environmental consultancy.
Soltropy, the Glasgow-based solar thermal technology developer.
Star Renewable Energy, the Glasgow-based industrial refrigeration and heating supplier.
Thermoelectric Conversion Systems Limited, the Glasgow-based thermoelectric power generation products provider.
Turnbull & Scott, the Hawick-based heating, heat transfer and heat recovery product manufacturer.
Patrick Harvie, minister for zero carbon buildings, active travel, and tenants’ rights, said: “Through this programme the Scottish Government is helping to create an environment where our businesses are encouraged to develop new technologies that support our transition to net zero.
“I am pleased to see such a diverse range of projects being supported by our funding and I look forward to seeing the progress that will be made to further develop these solutions.”
Suzanne Sosna, director of economic opportunities at Scottish Enterprise, commented: “Decarbonising heat will play a crucial role in meeting global net zero targets, creating opportunities for Scottish businesses in supply chain areas such as manufacturing, assembly, design, and consultancy and installation.
“This funding will help businesses that stand to benefit from the growth of green heat conduct detailed assessments of the feasibility of their solutions with a view to future commercial development.”
After four months of building a team that can evaluate the risks of frontier AI models, the UK’s previously-announced Frontier AI Taskforce will now evolve to become the AI Safety Institute, with Ian Hogarth continuing as its Chair.
The institute will test new types of the technology, both before and after they are released to address the potentially harmful capabilities of AI models. This includes exploring varying possible risks from bias and misinformation through to humanity losing complete control of AI.
World leaders and major AI businesses that attended the AI Safety Summit have expressed their support for the Institute, from Japan and Canada to OpenAI and Deepmind. Researchers at the Alan Turing Institute and Imperial College London have also welcomed the Institute’s launch, alongside representatives of the tech sector in TechUK and the Startup Coalition.
The UK government has said that when undertaking its research, the AI Safety Institute will work closely with the Alan Turing Institute, the national institute for data science and AI.
Speaking on the launch, prime minister Rishi Sunak remarked: “Our AI Safety Institute will act as a global hub on AI safety, leading on vital research into the capabilities and risks of this fast-moving technology.
“It is fantastic to see such support from global partners and the AI companies themselves to work together so we can ensure AI develops safely for the benefit of all our people. This is the right approach for the long-term interests of the UK.”
Secretary of state for science, innovation, and technology, Michelle Donelan, also commented: “The AI Safety Institute will be an international standard bearer.
“With the backing of leading AI nations, it will help policymakers across the globe in gripping the risks posed by the most advanced AI capabilities, so that we can maximise the enormous benefits.
“We have spoken at length about the Summit at Bletchley Park being a starting point, and as we reach the final day of discussions, I am enormously encouraged by the progress we have made and the lasting processes we have set in motion.”
The announcement of the AI Safety Institute comes during a week where the UKgovernment has declared a slew of AI-oriented actions and initiatives, both relating to and outwith the scope of the recently-held AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park.
For instance, towards the start of the week, the government unveiled a £118 million funding package, specifically to increase the UK’s artificial intelligence skills and also drive innovation. The University of Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt University secured a share of this pot to create a robotics safety centre that aims to train new PhD students in verification and certification systems for robotics and AI.
On Wednesday, which marked the start of the two-day UK AI Summit, the government also announced that it’s teaming up with global partners — such as the US, Canada, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation — to accelerate the development of artificial intelligence in Africa. The UK is helping to fund £80 million for this.
From the Summit itself, 28 nations signed a “landmark” agreement — the Bletchley Declaration. It saw Africa, South America, the Middle East, and Asia, as well as the EU, agreeing to the need to understand and collectively manage potential AI risks through a new joint global effort.
While the Summit brought together government and tech figures from across the globe, the Scottish Government’s innovation minister, Richard Lochhead, said this week that he was “disappointed the Scottish Government is not represented at the summit, despite requesting a place along with other devolved administrations.”
However, he also noted that after a meeting with Michelle Donelan, she “committed to closely engage with the Scottish Government going forward. I hope this happens.”
Project CAELUS, which is led by AGS Airports in partnership with NHS Scotland, has conducted live flight trials in a bid to deliver the UK’s first national medical distribution network using drones.
The trials took place between Glasgow Airport and NHS Golden Jubilee in Clydebank earlier this week.
CAELUS (Care & Equity – Healthcare Logistics UAS Scotland), is part funded by the UKRI’s Future Flight Challenge.
It brings together 16 partners including the University of Strathclyde, Skyports Drone Services, NATS and NHS Scotland. Together, they are working to deliver what will be the first national drone network that can transport essential medicines, bloods, and other medical supplies throughout Scotland, including to remote communities.
The CAELUS consortium comprises:
AGS Airports Limited
ANRA Technologies UK
Arup
AtkinsRéalis
Cellnex UK
Commonplace Digital
Connected Places Catapult
DGP Intelsius
Dronamics
NATS
NHS Scotland
Plane Finder
Skyports Drone Services
The Drone Office
Trax International
University of Strathclyde
Since January 2020, the CAELUS consortium has designed drone landing stations for NHS sites across Scotland and developed a digital twin of the proposed delivery network which connects hospitals, pathology laboratories, distribution centres, and GP surgeries across Scotland.
Live flight trials were operated by CAELUS consortium member Skyports Drone Services. The UK-based operator is an experienced provider of drone delivery, survey, and monitoring services. The company has a history of operating medical drone deliveries, including the first drone deliveries with the NHS.
Fiona Smith, group head of aerodrome strategy for AGS Airports and CAELUS project director, said: “These flight trials are an important step towards the integration of drones into modern airspace and enabling the safe use of drones at scale within Scotland’s airspace.
“The input from all partners has resulted in a high quality safety case for the flights undertaken in a busy airport environment which can be transposed for other sites in future. It has only been possible because of the hard work of every consortium member.
“The CAELUS project is set to revolutionise the way in which healthcare services are delivered in Scotland. A drones network can ensure critical medical supplies can be delivered more efficiently, it can reduce waiting times for test results and, more importantly, it can provide equity of care between urban and remote rural communities.
Liam Day, commercial project manager and CAELUS lead, Skyports Drone Services, also said: “It’s always fantastic to get our drones flying on new projects, especially when it marks an important step in delivering an impactful service that will benefit local communities and access to healthcare.
“We’re looking forward to continuing our journey with the CAELUS consortium to support NHS Scotland’s adoption of safe, efficient and sustainable drone services.”
Karen Bell, joint innovation lead for CAELUS for the NHS, explained: “We are delighted to have had a successful flight trial here in the West Coast of Scotland. Years of preparation with all of our partners have taken us to this point.
“We are well positioned to participate in this drone trial because of our vast geographical area of island and remote populations. This work has the potential to greatly improve our services closer to home. Now we can take the time to reflect on this experience and instil the improvements required.”.
Allan Shields, CAELUS clinical lead, Scottish Ambulance Service, also remarked: “This innovative scheme has the potential to benefit communities across Scotland, including those in remote and rural areas.
“We look forward to continuing to work with AGS Airports and partners on developing the project going forward.”
Now in its second and final day, the AI Safety Summit held at Bletchley Park, in Buckinghamshire, is bringing together nations from across the globe, in addition to tech and civil society experts, to discuss the risks associated with artificial intelligence and how they can be mitigated.
Those attending include prominent AI companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google Deepmind, as well as representatives from tech bodies like the Alan Turing Institute and the Ada Lovelace Institute. In terms of national presence, governmental figures from the US, Japan, China, France, Germany, and Italy, among other countries, are attending.
As the AI Safety Summit continues, Lochhead has voiced that he’s “disappointed the Scottish Government is not represented at the summit, despite requesting a place along with other devolved administrations.”
However, he also noted that, after a meeting with the Secretary of State Michelle Donelan, she “committed to closely engage with the Scottish Government going forward. I hope this happens.”
“Given the impact of AI regulation on devolved areas, and the likelihood implementation of regulation will be in the hands of Scottish agencies, Scotland’s interests and priorities need to be taken into account,” he added.
Lochhead has been the Scottish Government’s most vocal advocate for the ethical and trustworthy development, adoption, and use of artificial intelligence.
“Scotland gets AI,” he stated at an event this September at Scotland House London. “Our universities’ AI research and teaching has been ranked as world-class since the early formation of the sector, while Edinburgh was recently ranked the UK’s most “AI ready” city in the UK.”
“We are working to make Scotland a world leader in the development and use of artificial intelligence in a way which is trustworthy, ethical and inclusive. We are, first and foremost, a land of invention, a pioneer in technology and an ideal place to invest and grow an AI business,” he said.
Back in June of this year, Lochhead expressed his concerns over the UK Government’s “hands off” approach to AI regulation.
“We are a bit concerned that the current UK Government plans for the hands-off, non-statutory regulation of AI will not meet Scotland’s needs,” he said. “We don’t want to create unnecessary red tape, but we do have a duty to create the right supportive environment for business to thrive, and also for citizens to be protected.”
In a bid to help bring about such an environment at a global scale, 28 countries signed the Bletchley Declaration at the first day of the AI Safety Summit. It saw the countries agree to the urgent need to understand and collectively manage potential risks through a joint global effort, ensuring that AI is developed and deployed in a safe and responsible way.
It’s almost one year to the date that ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence-powered chatbot, was officially unveiled to the world by tech company OpenAI. The tool — which has since been further improved — represented a significant turning point not just in the development of AI, but it also prompted a sudden surge in public interest and uptake.
However, it also sparked deep fear, with international calls for artificial intelligence to be appropriately regulated amid its leaps and bounds. Because, while the technology offers a host of positive benefits, from driving scientific progress to productivity at work, there’s also the inverse: the countless risks regarding bias, inequality, safety, privacy, and security, as well as creative concerns regarding plagiarism and copyright.
Today, November 1st, a slew of high-profile attendees will descend on Buckinghamshire — and Bletchley Park, more specifically — for what prime minister Rishi Sunak has called “the first ever global AI safety summit.”
To ensure you get up to speed with the much-anticipated event, we’re providing the lowdown on the UK AI Summit, including what will be discussed and who’s tipped to attend. To provide a picture of what technology and business experts across the country want the outcomes from the summit to look like, we’ve also collected their insightful thoughts and opinions.
What Is the UK AI Summit — And What Will Be Discussed?
The UK AI Summit, which was first announced in June this year, is the coming-together of international governments, AI companies, civil society groups, and researchers. The main aims of the two-day summit are for the varying risks posed by AI to be collectively considered, and to discuss how they can be mitigated through co-ordinated action.
Topics for discussion include:
The potential risks to global safety stemming from AI misuse, especially regarding biosecurity and cybersecurity.
The plausible risks associated with AI’s integration into society, such as election disruption and the exacerbation of inequality.
The possible risks concerning very advanced AI that has lost human control and oversight.
What AI developers should do to scale their technology responsibly.
What national policymakers, the international community, and the scientific community should do in relation to the risks and opportunities posed by AI.
Michelle Donelan, the science, innovation, and technology secretary, is to open the first day (November 1st) of the summit. Prime minister Rishi Sunak, meanwhile, is to convene groups on the summit’s second day (November 2nd) to discuss how to ensure AI is used as a force for good.
The event itself is being held at Bletchley Park, a rather fitting location for what Sunak has cited as “the first ever global AI safety summit.” The country house was once the top-secret headquarters for codebreakers during World War II, housing the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS), with the likes of Alan Turing being a part of the GC&CS team of codebreakers. It’s now cited as the “birthplace of modern computing.”
Who’s Attending the AI Safety Summit?
The UK AI Summit, while much-hyped and seemingly drawing international leaders, is to be a quite intimate affair. Technology and entrepreneurial expert Matt Clifford, who has helped lead the preparations for the summit alongside ex-deputy national security adviser Jonathan Black, stated recently that there will be a rather limited number of guests.
Clifford took to X early this month to announce that: “There’ll be about 100 attendees, roughly split between Cabinet ministers from around the world, CEOs of companies building AI at the frontier, academics, and representatives of international civil society. This means making very tough choices about invitations!”
While there’s no officially released list of confirmed attendees, there have been numerous reports and rumours over the last months and weeks. For instance, in terms of Big Tech presence, The Telegraphwrote that chief executives from OpenAI — the creator of ChatGPT — as well as other major AI labs Google Deepmind and Anthropic, are expected to be in attendance. Further, the publication stated that it’s anticipated that Meta and Microsoft will send their respective policy chiefs, and Google its head of technology and society. Elon Musk is also set to attend, The Guardianreported, with a conversation between him and Sunak to be hosted on X on Thursday night.
As for global governmental figures, U.S. vice president Kamala Harris will attend as well as deliver a “major policy speech on the Biden-Harris Administration’s vision for the future of AI,” the White House recently announced. Two of the European Union’s most senior officials — Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission’s president, and vice president Věra Jourová — will also visit the UK for the summit. Further, on October 26th, deputy prime minister Oliver Dowden announced that China has accepted Britain’s summit invitation, despite prevailing tech-oriented tensions between Western countries and China.
Regarding those not attending, Bloomberg had reported that Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, won’t be there, citing people familiar with the matter. However, we will only truly know who’s attending the AI Safety Summit — and who isn’t — when Bletchley Park opens its doors.
What Specific Outcomes Is the Tech Industry Hoping For?
The ongoing debate surrounding artificial intelligence and its advancement and adoption could be best described as divisive. However, no matter the opinion you hold, there’s one thing that’s objectively true: AI is here to stay. As governmental and tech notables soon grapple with how to move forward with artificial intelligence, we’ve collected the thoughts of technology and business experts across the UK on what they hope the outcomes of today’s summit will be.
Ekaterina Almasque, OpenOcean
For Ekaterina Almasque, general partner at deeptech venture capital firm OpenOcean, she wants the major democratic nations to agree on a “flexible, principles-based framework” which tackles inherent issues but equally doesn’t hamper innovation.
“The development of AI has incredible potential to drive innovation and progress, but it also poses risks if not thoughtfully governed. We want to see an approach to AI governance that enables innovation while also establishing appropriate safeguards,” she said.
“A flexible, principles-based framework agreed upon by major democratic nations could strike the right balance. Prescriptive, heavy-handed regulations often lag behind the pace of technology and end up stifling progress. However, an agreement centred on ethical AI principles, transparency, accountability, and security could provide the right guardrails without hampering continued R&D.
“The key is encouraging ongoing collaboration between policymakers, researchers and industry leaders to keep updating governance as the technology evolves. Any rules or best practices adopted should remain voluntary to start, allowing room to gauge real-world impacts before considering firmer restrictions. The most important thing is that as this technology evolves, we continue monitoring its progress and hold open dialogues that ensure AI develops along the lines most beneficial to its end-users and society as a whole.”
Simon Thompson, GFT
Meanwhile, Simon Thompson, head of data science at digital transformation company GFT, would like to see a set of national-level regulations “rapidly brought into law” by participating countries, and “within the next few months.”
As he said: “My hope is that a realistic and well-informed picture of the opportunities and risks of AI technology is communicated to policymakers and that a pragmatic and useful agenda for immediate regulation is evolved that can be taken forward by all participating countries and businesses.
“We need a pragmatic and realisable agenda for regulation, this should be aimed at addressing the immediate harms and injustices that AI technology can facilitate as well as the benefits and this summit could produce that.
“AI regulation should look like a set of narrow, pragmatic, national-level regulations that can be rapidly brought into law, within the next few months. These regulations should, for a start, prohibit the distribution of unwatermarked AI-generated content, and impose requirements on the use and disclosure of training data for AI models that are used in public-facing APIs, services and software. This would allow citizens who have had their property appropriated by AI companies to identify this and to seek redress and would support collective bargaining for people from the creative industries to receive payment for their work.
“We also need legislation that ensures that workers are not abused in the process of creating AI models, there are some very distressing stories of people being terribly underpaid to train models, and of people who are forced by their circumstances to take work that exposes them to traumatic images and other content in the quest to make AI model behaviour more acceptable.”
Chris Vaughan, VP of technical account management EMEA at Tanium, also wants to see action regarding watermarked AI content — in addition to a strong response to risks such as a deepfakes. However, he believes “it’s unlikely that any statutory changes will happen immediately.”
“If I had the power to guarantee one outcome from the summit it would be mandatory tagging of AI generated content. Whether this is through a watermark, or another way, it’s vital that the average person can distinguish artificial content from reality,” he said.
“The most important point of discussion is how to protect the everyday person from AI. We’ve already seen dangerous applications that have the potential to impact society – like deepfakes and voice cloning. Deepfake videos of Sir Keir Starmer are a recent example of AI meddling with politics. There needs to be a strong response to this, before it gets out of hand.
“The summit appears to be more of a discussion, rather than a place that concrete decisions will be made. While guidance on the use of AI may be published soon after, it’s unlikely that any statutory changes will happen immediately. Passing new legislation is a lengthy process – so I wouldn’t expect any meaningful change for at least a few years.”
Rashik Parmar MBE, BCS
For Rashik Parmar MBE — the CEO of the British Computer Society (BCS) — who believes AI can be a real force for good, he wants the development and management of AI to be done by licensed experts who meet agreed-upon ethical standards.
As he said: “Over 1,300 technologists and leaders signed our open letter calling AI a force for good rather than an existential threat to humanity. AI won’t grow up like The Terminator. If we take the proper steps, it will be a trusted co-pilot from our earliest school days to our retirement.”
“One way to build that trust is for AI to be developed and managed by licensed professionals who meet international ethical standards. This is what we’d like to see agreed after the AI Safety Summit,” he continued.
Jason Tomlinson, RM Technology
Speaking of school days, Jason Tomlinson, managing director at RM Technology — which supplies technology and services to the education sector — hopes that the summit’s discussions will usher in a “bold” approach concerning AI safety in places of education.
“The AI summit represents a unique opportunity for the UK to set a global standard when it comes to AI safety in the classroom. To educate international education sectors on the opportunities and dangers, the government must take a bold stance on the need for proper training and regulation for schools. That means developing regulatory policies, leaning on the private sector’s expertise, and making teacher training schemes accessible,” he said.
“41% of teachers in the UK believe the government must intervene in the form of regulation. As such, this summit must mark the beginning of a wider investigation into AI’s role within the UK’s education system. At the moment, teachers lack the visibility and knowledge to understand how to keep students safe. As such, we’re at a crossroads where governments need to intervene and ensure students’ safety.”
Aidan Muller, Appraise Network
Rounding us out is Aidan Muller, the co-founder of the Appraise Network for AI professionals. He’d like to see plans and actions to tackle AI’s immediate threats, rather than crucial time being spent “discussing hypothetical doomsday scenarios.”
“Top of my wishlist would be sending a signal that we’re considering the actual threats that face us right here and now with appropriate urgency, along with concrete and realistic proposals to mitigate them,” he said. “Imminent threats like disinformation, cybercrime and illicit use of minors’ photos, for example. I’m less interested in the great and the good spending time discussing hypothetical doomsday scenarios.”
What Outcomes From the UK AI Summit Do You Want to See?
Many people — such as the experts mentioned above — are hoping for specific actions to come from the event. What are you wanting, in terms of outcomes? Feel free to let us know your thoughts, opinions, and wishes via LinkedIn or X.
Medical device specialist Nebu~Flow has secured a prestigious Institute of Physics award, the Business Start-up Award, for “exceptional efforts in the application of surface acoustic waves to a new generation of nebulisers with the potential to transform respiratory drug delivery.”
The company received the award at the Institute of Physics Business Innovation and Growth Showcase at the UK Parliament this week, at which Nebu~Flow’s technology was demonstrated.
The Institute of Physics’s Business Awards recognise the significant contribution that physicists and physics make in industry. CEO and co-founder Dr Elijah Nazarzadeh commented: “We’re thrilled to receive the award for our disruptive nebuliser technology.
“Essentially, we have been able to harness acoustic energy to aerosolise liquids in a way that enables more efficient drug delivery of biologies to treat respiratory disorders.”
Institute of Physics president, Sir Keith Burnett, commented: “All of this year’s winners have creatively applied physics to bring about positive change to individuals, societies or economies, by tackling a new problem or improving on a previous solution, and all are thoroughly deserving of an IOP Business Award.”
Dr John Pritchard, chairman, Nebu~Flow, remarked: “At Nebu~Flow, we are proud to lead the charge in reshaping the future of inhalation drug delivery to treat respiratory disorders, which are a leading cause of death and disability in the world.”
Last year, Nebu~Flow raised a pre-seed £1.7 million investment led by Foresight Williams Technology, and the company has just embarked on its next external funding round which will see it move towards the commercialisation stage.
With a view to commercialisation, Nebu~Flow recently hired Graham Matthews from Philips Home Healthcare Solutions to drive its business development function. Additionally, Dr Gary Pitcairn, formerly head of project leadership (respiratory) at AstraZeneca, joined Nebu~Flow’s advisory board.
Nebu~Flow has accelerated its product development activities in 2023, has patents in place in the US and Canada, and now has a team of 11 at its Glasgow headquarters. Further, the company’s prototype has achieved high levels of drug delivery precision, at over 90%. Nebu~Flow expects to announce its first commercial agreements during 2025.
Dr Nazarzadeh further added: “Our system promises to revolutionise the way pharmaceuticals are administered, and we’re actively engaged with a number of leading pharmaceutical and medical device groups worldwide.
“What marks our technology out from the rest of the industry, which is hitting the right notes with potential customers, is around how we can ensure an optimal dosage reaches the target site with unprecedented accuracy, reducing drug delivery time and enhancing clinical outcomes.”
Nebu~Flow’s nebuliser has been developed to provide a number of advantages over existing technologies in a global nebuliser market valued at close to £1 billion. Overall, the worldwide inhalable drug market is estimated to be worth approximately £35 billion.
Bletchley Park, the Buckinghamshire country house which is cited as “the birthplace of modern computing,” will play host to the two-day summit, where the risks posed by AI’s advancement will be considered, and co-ordinated action to tackle those risks will be discussed.
Technology secretary Michelle Donelan will open the event by first welcoming attendees, and then setting out the UK government’s vision for safety and security to be at the heart of advances in AI, in order to leverage its opportunities. This is to be followed by comments by nations at the front of AI development, as well as the UK’s Frontier AI Taskforce.
Over the course of the two days, topics for discussion will include the potential risks to global safety stemming from AI misuse, especially regarding biosecurity and cybersecurity, and what AI developers should do to scale their technology responsibly, among other matters.
The US, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and China are now among nations confirmed as attendees. Representatives from bodies The Alan Turing Institute, The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and the Ada Lovelace Institute are also among the groups confirmed to attend.
The government further stated that leading AI developers with a presence in the UK, such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google Deepmind, will be there, aligning with what The Telegraph had previously reported.
Speaking on the summit’s commencement, Donelan said: “AI is already an extraordinary force for good in our society, with limitless opportunity to grow the global economy, deliver better public services and tackle some of the world’s biggest challenges.
“But the risks posed by frontier AI are serious and substantive and it is critical that we work together, both across sectors and countries to recognise these risks.
“This summit provides an opportunity for us to ensure we have the right people with the right expertise gathered around the table to discuss how we can mitigate these risks moving forward. Only then will we be able to truly reap the benefits of this transformative technology in a responsible manner.”
As the AI Safety Summit begins, read our comprehensive rundown of the event, including who else is tipped to attend, what other associated topics will be deliberated, and what the UK tech industry wants to see in terms of outcomes.
New funds from the Scottish Government will help more people from underrepresented backgrounds start their own businesses and nurture fledgling companies. A total of 42 recipients will benefit from the £1.6 million Ecosystem Fund, and 20 projects will get a share of the £1.3m Pre-Start Pathways Fund.
Wellbeing economy secretary Neil Gray announced the recipients of these funds at the Scottish Black Talent Summit in Edinburgh. “These two funds provide key support to unlock the potential in underrepresented communities, realising their talent and widening pathways for them to start thriving businesses.” said Gray emphasising the importance of these two funds.
The Ecosystem Fund, with a total value of £1.6 million, will be distributed among 42 recipients, enabling crucial support to individuals from underrepresented backgrounds who aspire to launch businesses. This fund’s primary objective is to foster the growth and prosperity of fledgling companies in the vibrant Scottish entrepreneurial landscape.
The £1.3 million Pre-Start Pathways Fund, meanwhile, will support 20 projects dedicated to empowering underrepresented communities to pursue entrepreneurship. This initiative seeks to offer aspiring entrepreneurs the necessary resources and guidance to take their initial steps in the world of business.
Among the recipients of these funds is DataKirk, an Edinburgh-based data literacy company. “We are delighted that DataKirk has been chosen as the recipient of both the Scottish Ecosystem Fund and the Pathways Pre-Start Fund by the Scottish Government. These grants will enable us to further our mission of empowering Black Talent to reach their full entrepreneurial potential,” said Fash Fasoro, the founder and chief executive officer at DataKirk.
“These grants will enable us to expand our efforts, support more aspiring Black Talent entrepreneurs, and foster an ecosystem of inclusivity and innovation. This is a significant step forward in our journey, and we are excited about the positive change we can bring to communities and the Scottish entrepreneurial landscape.”
In an era where promoting entrepreneurship among individuals from underrepresented communities is more vital than ever, the Scottish Government initiative is also prioritising women among other priority groups, aiming to provide them with the resources and guidance needed to embark on their entrepreneurial endeavours.
The Scottish Government initiative aims to pave the way for a more inclusive and thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem, empowering underrepresented individuals to contribute to Scotland’s entrepreneurial growth and build a more equitable and prosperous future for all.
“Funding grassroots organisations is crucial. But we must also address systemic gaps preventing equal entrepreneurial participation. That’s why the Pre-Start Fund complements the Ecosystem Fund in extending support more widely,” continued Gray.
“Between established business community support and expanding community inclusion programmes, I believe Scotland is building an entrepreneurial climate that lives up to our guiding missions of equality, opportunity and community.”
The new UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training in Dependable and Deployable Artificial Intelligence for Robotics, shortened to CDT-D2AIR, will train new PhD students in verification and certification systems for robotics and AI.
The aim is to ensure that robotics applications in the home and in industry — such as AI assistants to help with independent living, or robotic machinery in manufacturing and construction — can interact safely with the environment and users.
The robotics safety centre is being awarded a share of £117 million funding by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) as one of 12 new Centres for Doctoral Training being announced by the UK government this week, in the run up to the AI Safety Summit 2023.
ECR includes the National Robotarium, the centre for robotics and artificial intelligence based at Heriot-Watt’s Edinburgh campus, and the Bayes Centre, the University of Edinburgh’s innovation hub for data science and artificial intelligence.
The state-of-the-art facilities include living labs, a robotic testing and development space, and more than £20m in robotics equipment.
Students working in the D2AIR Centre for Doctoral Training will be able to simulate and test their solutions on this equipment, and will be trained in the latest methods in AI, verification, design, and robotics, the project partners say.
Ron Petrick, professor of computer science at Heriot-Watt University and a researcher in automated planning and robotics, is director of the new D2AIR Centre for Doctoral Training.
He said: “There is a clear need for robotics and AI systems be certifiable, reliable and capable of interacting safely with people and the environment. While AI methods are being increasingly used in robotics, much of this technology was not originally designed with safety and other important human-centred requirements in mind.
“Making AI truly applicable to, and deployable in, robotic solutions will require advanced sets of skills and a new way of thinking.”
Petrick said examples such as generative AI assistants – embodied as robots or speakers – that are deployed in the home to help with independent living, had to converse and collaborate safely.
Robots that can sense and interact in their environment for manufacturing and construction also had to work in challenging and extreme environments.
“Crucially, in all of these cases, the safety of autonomous systems is key to their deployability, especially when they need to operate around people,” he added.
Petrick also said D2AIR would build a new talent pipeline of graduates who can think in new ways around researching, designing, building, and deploying dependable and safe robotics solutions.
“This pipeline will increase productivity, catapulting the UK as a world-leader in trustworthy robotics and AI technologies,” he continued.
UKRI said £117 million funding in total had been awarded to 12 Centres for Doctoral Training in Artificial Intelligence based at 16 universities.
The investment has been made to help ensure that the UK has the skills needed to seize the potential of the AI era and nurture talent.
According to a new survey from Gartner, the risk associated with dependence on a particular cloud provider for multiple business capabilities is in the top five emerging risks for firms — and for the second quarter running.
The technology research and consulting firm surveyed nearly 300 risk executives last month, garnering insights into their views on emerging risk or over-the-horizon risks. These have been presented in Gartner’s 3Q23 Emerging Risk Report.
Speaking on the findings and on concentration risk especially, Ran Xu, research director in the Gartner legal risk and compliance practice, said: “The risk associated with cloud concentration is fast losing its ‘emerging’ status as it is becoming a widely recognized risk for most enterprises.”
“Many organizations are now in a position where they would face severe disruption in the event of the failure of a single provider,” he continued.
Gartner suggested that cloud concentration risk has arisen due to many businesses opting to focus their IT efforts on a handful of strategic providers, as to reduce IT complexity, risk, cost, and skill requirements.
Compounding this is a handful of hyperscale vendors, which “dominate global and regional markets with superior technical capabilities, business reach and partner ecosystems,” Gartner said.
The research and consulting firm’s experts highlighted three main potential consequences stemming from overreliance on a single cloud provider.
The first is a “wide incident ‘blast radius,’” meaning that the more applications and processes which depend on a particular cloud provider, the greater the potential breadth of impact a cloud service issue could have.
The second is “high vendor dependence.” Concentrated dependency on a particular vendor can reduce future tech options, and allow vendors to “exert significant influence over the organization’s technology future.”
The third is “regulatory compliance failures.” Businesses may be unable to meet regulatory demands to address concentration risk across different regulatory bodies, according to Gartner, as the bodies may have different views on how to approach concentration risk.
In response to the research, Xu advocated for businesses to have a “well-considered continuity place” in place.
“Currently, if the benefits of public cloud use are considered strategically important to a business, there are not many obvious solutions to remove the risk altogether.
“That’s why it is especially important that businesses have a well-considered continuity plan to put into action should they face any major cloud service issues,” advised Xu.
Alongside cloud concentration risk, third party viability and mass generative AI availability also feature in the list of the top five emerging risks for a second consecutive quarter, with third-party viability topping the list on both occasions.
Penrhos Bio, the Scottish-based cleantech bioscience company, has raised £3 million in Series A funding.
The raise comes from a consortium of investors including St Andrews-based firm Eos, New York branding partner Earthbound Brands LLC, and national economic development agency Scottish Enterprise, with several individuals and current shareholders also participating.
The funding round was further supported by Innova Partnerships, the Perthshire-based firm helping to build healthcare and life science enterprises.
The funding will accelerate the regulatory submission and commercialisation of the firm’s anti-biofilm technology, Remora.
Originally developed in collaboration with Unilever, the multinational consumer packaged goods company, Remora protects surfaces against multi-species harmful bacteria, fungi, and algae. The technology provides a sustainable alternative to disinfectants and antimicrobial agents in domestic and industrial settings.
The company has also appointed Earthbound Brands LLC co-founder and CEO, Jeff Cohen, and Eos partner, Andrew Durkie, to the Board.
Commenting, Penrhos Bio CEO professor Richard Hammond said: “Remora is inspired by nature, with sustainability and the environment at the front and centre of everything we do.
“With the support of our current investor base and new investors, we continue to build the business. This investment will allow us to accelerate our regulatory activities leading to active registration alongside building our brand value in Remora.
“We welcome Jeff Cohen and Andrew Durkie to our Board and look forward to their expertise and guidance as we continue to build the business.”
Penrhos Bio is already working with multiple corporate partners spanning agri-tech, marine, renewables, and healthcare. In June this year, working with commercial healthcare partner Pro3dure Medical, the use of Remora was approved by Health Canada for use in 3D printed dental medical devices.
The next phase will see more product launches as Penrhos moves through the necessary regulatory approval processes alongside its commercial partners.
Hammond continued: “We are excited with the progress Penrhos has made to date and look forward to continued commercial success. There are some exiting developments in the pipeline, and I would like to thank all the shareholders for their support of the business to enable these going forward.”
Andrew Durkie, partner at Eos, also commented: “Since we invested in 2022, Richard and his team have continued to impress Eos with their scale of ambition and progress. Remora is a brand that has the potential to be a game-changer across multiple industries. Penhros Bio is precisely the kind of impact investment Eos was set up to support.”
Kerry Sharp, director of entrepreneurship and investment at Scottish Enterprise, remarked: “With a wide range of applications and target industries Penrhos Bio’s new anti-biofilm technology is primed for commercial success and has strong appeal for international markets.
“Its innovative approach provides a sustainable alternative to products currently available, giving it a unique selling point that is sure to accelerate the company’s growth.”
Crover, the deep-tech robotics and agri-tech organisation, has been awarded £50,000 in Innovate UK funding to progress its study of remote autonomous operations of a grain-swimming robot.
The Edinburgh firm’s robotic grain storage management solution provides a new way to improve and automate monitoring and management activities. The robot can be deployed in grain sheds and silos to give farmers and grain storage operators accurate insights into the conditions of their crops.
The new funding will support Crover in making its system ‘smarter’ by enhancing its autonomous operating capabilities, using AI solutions, and improving the efficiency of data transmission, including through 5G protocols, to provide even more insight to grain handlers.
By ‘swimming’ through grain, the CROVER robot provides in-situ stirring of the grain, which helps maintain its quality, as well as improving the health and safety of grain storage operations.
The robot will also help grain storage operators reduce losses and maintain optimum storage conditions, creating a platform that can be integrated into existing monitoring systems, improving their efficacy substantially, or substitute them completely. Without the CROVER robot, post-harvest losses during storage can be anywhere between 2%-10% each year.
Both The Scotland 5G Centre (S5GC) and CeeD supported Crover’s latest Innovate UK funding bid, with the next stage of testing being conducted within S5GC’s Forth Valley innovation hub this month.
Crover will make use of the expertise of the S5GC team and its facilities to enhance the automation capabilities of the system, also through the optimisation of the data transfer.
Lorenzo Conti, founder and managing director, Crover, said: “We are delighted about the support, helping us take our mission of ‘enabling humanity to reach below the surface’ further, and we look forward to the new collaboration with The Scotland 5G Centre and CeeD.
“Automation will no doubt benefit grain storage operators hugely, however, without a mechanism to report learnings and captured by the CROVER robot, all this effort is wasted. Being able to test the system in an environment like the S5GC has within its innovation hubs is invaluable and will be of huge benefit to myself and the team.”
Tom Marchbanks, business engagement manager for Forth Valley, The Scotland 5G Centre, commented: “It has been great to support Lorenzo and his team with their successful bid for Innovate UK funding. The value that 5G technologies can provide organisations of any shape, size and sector knows no bounds.
“It is our mission to support innovative SME’s that are passionate about futureproofing their operations to bring their ideas to life. A connected world relies on innovation, collaboration and open mindedness so it’s fantastic to see Scottish businesses, like Crover, paving the way.”
Joe Pacitti, managing director, CeeD, further commented: “CeeD is really pleased to be able to help many of our members around a range of support activities and connections. Where Crover is concerned, helping the business through signposting for partners previously and in this case directing them to funding partners and seeing a successful outcome is really great news.
“Helping early stage companies to find both funding mechanisms and industry partners (consortia) is an area we at CeeD are increasingly helping members to navigate their way through.”
Conti recently joined Scotland’s National Robotarium, where Crover is based, which will provide the company access to state-of-the-art development facilities and to the wider industrial, academic, and investment robotic ecosystem which will support its ambitious growth plans.
The S5GC and CeeD established a partnership three years ago, allowing both organisations to connect with new audiences, raise awareness of the benefits of advanced technology to businesses and to build a two-way communication stream to explore and address business challenges.
Over the past three years, S5GC and CeeD have hosted a number of joint events, including on the role which 5G and data connectivity plays in reducing carbon emissions.
Retroactive facial recognition (RFR) is where technology is utilised after an event to help establish who somebody is, checking if their image matches against other media held in a database. According to Philp, “every force uses RFR to some extent already,” but its use varies between police forces “and could be greatly increased.”
In his recent letter written to police chiefs, the policing minister pushed for RFR search increases, stating that it will be possible to exceed 200,000 searches of still images against the Police National Database by early summer if a “concerted effort” from all forces in England and Wales is made.
As well as more AI-enabled retroactive facial recognition searches, he also reinforced his support for use of live facial recognition (LFR). LFR is where cameras stream images of people in a specific — and usually dense — area in real-time to a facial recognition system.
The usage of live facial recognition in particular has come under consistent fire from rights and privacy groups, such as Big Brother Watch. Big Brother Watch’s director Silkie Carlo, for instance, previously said that LFR has the potential to “turn us into walking ID cards living in a surveillance state.”
Speaking on why he’s urged for more facial recognition use, the crime and policing minister said: “AI technology is a powerful tool for good, with huge opportunities to advance policing and cut crime. We are committed to making sure police have the systems they need to solve and prevent crimes, bring offenders to justice, and protect the public.
“Facial recognition, including live facial recognition, has a sound legal basis that has been confirmed by the courts and has already enabled a large number of serious criminals to be caught, including for murder and sexual offences.
“This is not about acquiring new kit and deploying new tech for the sake of it; it is about staying one step ahead of criminals; delivering smarter, more effective policing and, ultimately, making our streets safer.”
Philp’s advocacy comes just weeks after a coalition of cross-party parliamentarians, rights and equality groups, and technology experts called for the immediate stop to live facial recognition surveillance from the police and private companies.
Backed by the likes of former Brexit secretary David Davis, Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey, and Green MP Caroline Lucas, the coalition warned against the “serious concerns” surrounding the deployment and use of the controversial technology.
However, in another nod to the UK government’s efforts to scale up efforts on this front, a “market exploration” of facial recognition technologies was launched by DASA on behalf of the Home Office last month.
The aim of it is to help the Home Office “have a better understanding of current technologies that could enhance facial recognition capabilities.”
Meanwhile, over in Europe, the European Parliament has recently endorsed a blanket ban on police using AI-powered facial recognition under its AI Act.
Zühlke, the global innovation service provider, has hired Sandra Blake as its group head of talent. With Blake joining the firm’s fast-growing Scottish office, she will lead the talent function across Zühlke’s international network.
Linda Scott, a Zühlke director based in Edinburgh, said: “It’s notable that we have executives with global remits operating out of our Scotland base, our headcount here is now up to 16, and it’s also encouraging to see that around two out of three of our team are women.”
Sandra Blake herself commented: “It’s an exciting time to be joining Zühlke, who continue to be in hiring mode to support our future global growth plans. What is already striking is the high calibre of our global teams, supporting so many amazing brands across the world.
“My role here will be to continue to ensure we have the right people to deliver the right work for our clients. I’m delighted to be in a global role, based locally in our Scotland office.”
Founded in Switzerland in 1968, partner-owned Zühlke has almost 2,000 employees worldwide in territories across Europe and Asia. The Scotland office was officially opened by Kate Forbes MSP and the UK’s Swiss ambassador, Markus Leitner, in June 2022.
With a client base that includes organisations like HSBC and NHS England, Zühlke has a focus on financial services, government, and healthcare in the UK.
Zühlke has also recently launched a series of UK networking events titled “Women Who Impact,” with the inaugural Edinburgh event taking place on 1st November.
Sarah Dixon, chief operating officer at GoCodeGreen, a B Corp climatetech company focused on measuring and identifying actions to reduce the carbon impact of the digital sector, has been lined up as a keynote speaker in Edinburgh.
Zühlke recently partnered with GoCodeGreen to address the growing need for banks to be more sustainable and adhere to growing ESG requirements.
Linda Scott added: “We want to be at the forefront of women in tech in Scotland, and the Women Who Impact series will be the first of a number of initiatives in this space.”
Relatedly, Angela Bishop will be taking over the role of CEO for Zühlke UK in January, becoming the first female CEO at Zühlke.
RFA UK (Rocket Factory Ltd), the satellite launch company, has received £3.5 million in funding to support its plans to launch from Scotland’s SaxaVord Spaceport in Shetland.
The announcement comes as UK science and technology minister, George Freeman, visits SaxaVord Spaceport to see the site’s construction progress and meet key members of RFA UK.
The funding was awarded by the UK Space Agency as part of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Boost! Programme, which aims to aid the development of new launch technologies and bring them to market.
RFA UK, which is a subsidiary of Rocket Factory Augsburg AG (RFA AG), is headquartered in Grantown-on-Spey. The company plan to use the funding to develop and operate the infrastructure and test equipment needed to enable them to launch RFA ONE satellite rockets from SaxaVord Spaceport.
Measuring 30 metres tall and 2 metres wide, the RFA ONE rocket is a three-stage launch vehicle capable of deploying up to 1,300 kg to a 500 km polar orbit. The firm said that the rocket boasts efficient and environmentally friendly Helix staged-combustion engines, stainless steel tanks, and standardised components from other industries.
Jörn Spurmann, managing director of RFA UK and chief commercial officer at RFA AG, said: “The support received from the UK Space Agency underscores their strong confidence in our approach. We are eagerly anticipating our inaugural orbital launch in mainland Europe from the SaxaVord Spaceport on British territory.”
George Freeman MP, minister of state at the department for science, innovation and technology, meanwhile commented: “Through our c£1.5bn UK space funding programmes the Government is backing satcomms technology, space science, missions and infrastructure to support the commercial satellite sector.
“This £3.5 million investment will enable RFA UK to develop the technologies necessary to launch from SaxaVord Spaceport in Scotland, creating dozens of jobs locally and growing the Scottish cluster as a key part of the UK space sector.”
It’s been anticipated that around 90 skilled jobs will be created locally when the Spaceport site becomes fully operational.
Matt Archer, director of launch at UK Space Agency, remarked that: “Our investment to Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA) UK demonstrates our continued commitment to make the UK Europe’s leading destination for launch by encouraging the development of launch companies.
“This contract will help RFA UK and SaxaVord Spaceport prepare for their first launch, creating high skilled jobs and supporting Government’s vision for the UK to be Europe’s most attractive launch destination by 2030.”
Finally, Scott Hammond, SaxaVord Spaceport deputy CEO, said: “We are delighted that the UK Space Agency has awarded this funding to our client to help them progress towards launch from our site in Unst, the UK’s first vertical launch spaceport.”
One of the last times DIGIT reported on a story involving SaxaVord Spaceport was in July this year, when suspected Early Bronze Age ritual remains were discovered while groundworks were taking place.
The team, dubbed “Preparedness,” aims to track, evaluate, forecast, and protect against devastating AI-propelled risks to the planet and society. Its areas of focus include chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear threats, cybersecurity, and “individualised persuasion” — AI’s ability to trick and influence humans.
“We believe that frontier AI models, which will exceed the capabilities currently present in the most advanced existing models, have the potential to benefit all of humanity,” the San Fransico-based technology company wrote in a new update. “But they also pose increasingly severe risks.”
Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Aleksander Madry — and full-time OpenAI staff member as of six months ago, according to LinkedIn — has been named as the Preparedness team’s lead. At MIT, Madry directs the university’s Centre for Deployable Machine Learning, but is currently on leave.
With Preparedness’ announcement, the AI company has listed two open roles for the new team: a national security threat researcher, and a research engineer. The duties of both roles include identifying emerging AI safety risks (not least from a national security front), building and designing evaluation and assessment tools, and contributing to the refinement of risk management.
Further, to help identify “less obvious areas of concern” and receive ideas on how to prevent catastrophic misuse of artificial intelligence, OpenAI has also launched a coinciding “Preparedness Challenge.”
“Imagine we gave you unrestricted access to OpenAI’s Whisper (transcription), Voice (text-to-speech), GPT-4V, and DALLE·3 models, and you were a malicious actor,” the Challenge’s first question reads. “Consider the most unique, while still being probable, potentially catastrophic misuse of the model.”
Up to ten of the top submissions in OpenAI’s eyes will receive $25,000 in API credits, the company said. There’s also the potential for these contenders to join Preparedness.
The declaration of the Preparedness team and its accompanying Challenge comes just days before the UK AI Safety Summit kicks off. The Summit is bringing together global governments, companies, and researchers in a bid to collectively discuss and mitigate risk stemming from artificial intelligence.
The CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, is expected to be attending the two-day event, as are the chief executives from other major AI companies, such as Google DeepMind and Anthropic.
While sometimes overlooked by its larger Scottish cousins by way of Edinburgh and Glasgow, Aberdeen is home to a bustling tech community nonetheless.
The city is traditionally known as a hub for the oil and gas industry, but as the UK repositions itself on the backdrop of the wider push towards clean energy, so has Aberdeen.
According to the most recent energy sector briefing by the Scottish government, employment in the energy growth sector was highest in Aberdeen city and Aberdeenshire, together making up 46% of employment in the sector.
Alongside this, Aberdeen is home to top educational institutions such as Robert Gordon University, and the University of Aberdeen. Both of these universities have excellent entrepreneurial programmes, such as RGU’s Entrepreneurship and Innovation group and the University of Aberdeen’s ABVentures, which support the development of new businesses and inspire innovation among students.
Outside of the universities, Aberdeen is home to a number of incubators and accelerators. Notably, ElevatorUK which helps roughly 3,500 new businesses start up each year across Scotland, and runs a fully funded 12-week accelerator delivered in Aberdeen each year.
Aberdeen is also home to the Net Zero Technology Centre, which brings together scientists and engineers in its TechX Ventures programme to create new clean energy companies that help accelerate an affordable energy transition.
Looking through all these great success stories, DIGIT wanted to highlight some of the startups that are new to the scene, but poised to make a big impact.
1. Sequetrics Limited
Sequestrics Limited is a startup founded in 2019, that has developed a technology to provide insights on surface quality. It does this with an advanced analytics platform that uses artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to generate advisory to its clients about cracks, objects, water, ice, and debris at high resolution.
It does this from vast volumes of data gleaned from sensing and imaging devices. “Multi-modal sensor technology combined with data analytics will help reduce human errors to assess runway conditions.”
The startup secured funding from RGU’s Accelerator in 2019, as well as from the Scottish Funding Council in 2021 and Scottish Enterprise for undisclosed amounts. At the moment, it is participating in the SmartThings Accelerator Centre, a Scottish accelerator dedicated to IoT startup tech.
Formed in 2022 from four industry veterans with more than 30 years of experience in the energy sector, launched its flagship technology, which is poised to improve the life-cycle, safety, sustainability and reliability of floating offshore wind operations.
Encomara’s patented product, SQUID, serves as a quick connector for cables, mooring lines, and anchor interfaces, allowing for ‘plug-to-power’ capabilities. This pre-installation and pre-commissioning of marine hardware, according to Encomara, will reduce both the cost and risk associated with installing the offshore turbines.
The startup is focusing on expanding its team to recruit more onshore personnel and engineers over the next few months to advance its technologies.
SeaWeed Energy is another success story out of Aberdeen’s RGU. It has designed a compact wave energy converter that can be installed as either a standalone unit or with multiple connected devices.
The system, called Kelp, can extract energy from the shoreline out to deeper waters offshore. It is designed based on an oscillating wave surge converter type device that can harness underwater wave surge force.
Earlier this year, the startup landed £100,100 in funding from the Scottish Government’s flagship Just Transition Fund, which is investing £500 million over ten years, and aimed at accelerating energy transition and job security in the north-east and Moray.
Oasis Marine Power launched in 2020 as a subsidiary of Jebb Smith Ltd, in an effort to innovate marine mooring systems. Its flagship technology, the Oasis Power Buoy, allows vessels to moor up and recharge from a zero-emission wind turbine.
Oasis Marine Power was recently selected to lead an offshore charging station along with three other organisations. The project will benefit from £1.5 million in funding, handed down from the UK’s £60 million Clean Maritime Demonstration Competition (CMDC) grant funding to install the world’s first offshore charging station within a UK wind farm.
Hydrowheel is a Aberdeen-based company founded in 2021 which has developed an inflatable water wheel that generates affordable, accessible renewable energy with less damage to the local ecosystem.
The hydro wheel is compact and easily transportable. It floats on the water, which produces less damage to local ecosystems. This also allows it to glean energy from a broader section of a stream, and be tethered together with other sections to be larger.
Hydrowheel is a success story out of the Net Zero Technology Centre’s TechX Ventures programme, where it participated in the 2023 cohort and received £100,000 in funding.
Leap Automation makes end of line automation and vision systems for food producers. Initially the company was founded in 2018 focusing on industrial robotics. In 2020, the company pivoted to the food sector amidst the covid pandemic, finding its niche and a gap in the market to flourish.
Since then the company has raised over £3 million with significant investments from Alba Equity and Scottish Enterprise. After this, the company doubled its team from 21 to 42, and is now in a position to scale its operations. This summer at the KPMG Tech Innovator awards it won top place in the Scotland regional pitch event, and eventually bronze at the UK-wide event.
This startup was founded in 2019, using blockchain technology to create solutions in sectors such as supply chain management, food and beverage, and e-waste management. The startup came out of Robert Gordon University’s Startup accelerator programme, and also took part in the ONE Digital Accelerator programme in 2019.
One of the startup’s flagship projects is a secure and seamless platform to facilitate data sharing over the blockchain. This plug-and-play Blockchain as a Service (BaaS) allows companies to connect to the platform utilising APIs without having to know about blockchain programming.
The startup has recently secured a £10,000 grant from the SpaceClimate programme to use earth monitoring, satellite navigation, and data management systems to offer food producers and consumers insight on the carbon footprint of their food’s supply chain.
Founded in 2021 by a lecturer and member of the solid-state research group at the University of Aberdeen, RIPCELL uses a patented process called the BiCircular Solution to use waste to recycle waste. This process can release high grade materials back into the market, and create a closed loop system for manufacturer.
Notably, RIPCELL claims that their patented process can reduce the carbon footprint of the EV manufacturing industry by more than 60%. The timing for this is critical, as the UK needs to increase its critical metals by up to 9,000% to reach anticipated Gigafactory capacity, according to Benchmark Minerals. The BiCircular Solution will act to secure an internal supply of lithium, cobalt, manganese, copper, and aluminium.
The startup recently landed £626, 734 to pilot a technology that uses a waste product from whisky production called pot ale to deploy a ‘green solvent’ that can be used in recycling batteries. The funding came from the £50 million instalment of the Just Transition Fund, which is investing £500 million over ten years in the north-east and Moray.
While not based in Aberdeen, the Elgin-based startup is hard to overlook. It was founded in 2019 by an experienced physiotherapists and a movement practitioner looking to improve the lives of people with spinal cord injuries and neurological disabilities. Their flagship technology, the MyGo, is a wearable ‘exoskeleton’ technology that uses strategically placed printed conductive electrodes to improve mobility in patients with spinal cord or neurological disabilities.
The startup won ‘Innovator of the Year’ in last year’s Elevator UK competition, and landed £46,128 in grant funding from Innovate UK to pilot their MyGo technology. The company also landed a £15,000 funding package from the Scottish Edge Awards back in 2020, and crowd-funded just over £13,000 from an IndieGoGo campaign last year, with the goal of finishing the development of its prototype. Earlier this year, the company finally received its patent certificate for the MyGo product.
Which new, interesting Aberdeen tech companies are on your radar?
If there’s a particular startup that you’d like to champion — and think would be at home in a list like this — feel free to let us know via LinkedIn, Twitter, or by email via the editor@digit.fyi address.
Growth in the Scottish economy has been faltering in 2023, with a high interest rate environment and wider economic uncertainty leading to investment being delayed or cancelled, according to the Fraser of Allander Institute.
The independent think tank, based at the University of Strathclyde, has just released its latest Deloitte-sponsored Economic Commentary, which includes an assessment on key economy-related data.
Its economists are forecasting growth of 0.2% in 2023, 0.7% in 2024, and 1.2% in 2025. For 2023, this is down on the Institute’s previous set of forecasts in June, due to data for the year being much weaker than expected.
The most recent data on inflation, which held steady at 6.7% in September, points to the high inflationary and interest rate environment likely persisting for longer than previously thought.
Professor Mairi Spowage, the director of the Institute, said: “Growth in 2023 so far has presented a pretty mixed picture. While much better than we were expecting at the end of 2022 – with the predictions of recession proving thankfully unfounded.
“Despite this though, it is clear that businesses are not feeling that conditions are great right now, with many delaying or cancelling investment due to the high interest rate environment and wider economic uncertainty.”
Angela Mitchell, senior partner for Scotland at Deloitte, also commented: “This quarter’s commentary shows a thoroughly mixed outlook for our economy and, accordingly, for business and consumers.
“Notably, the rate at which businesses are delaying or cancelling investments is high. This chimes with findings from our latest CFO Survey, which found CFOs are focused on reducing leverage and capital expenditure is seen as a low priority.”
It also aligns with findings from the Scottish Chambers of Commerce, which DIGIT reported on yesterday. The Chambers’ survey further found that concern over interest rates has seen a significant increase, rising from 37% of Scots businesses last quarter to now half of firms, marking a five-year survey high.
Though, as Mitchell added, the Institute’s Commentary “encouragingly notes that there are signs that the investment hesitation is only temporary.”
“The commentary raises the critical need for meaningful engagement and co-production between industry and government in enacting the kind of systemic change that is needed for vital sectors of our economy to flourish,” Mitchell also said.
“Ahead of the UK Government’s Autumn Statement, which will be followed closely by the Scottish Budget, that meaningful dialogue is vital to ensure the most urgent needs of our people and businesses are being met.”
Grant Thomas has joined the firm as its chief commercial officer (CCO), with Susheel Dodeja joining as director of business development.
These two new appointments follow a year of momentum for xDesign, which has seen it secure minority investment from Soho Square Capital and join forces with innovation and design company CreateFuture.
Grant and Susheel are set to continue the work the company has done to bolster its offering in the market, each bringing a wealth of experience in the financial services and public sector, respectively.
Both have joined xDesign from competitor BJSS, where Grant was a board director responsible for its sales and marketing practices, and Susheel its head of presale, having also previously led its public sector, heath and commodities practices.
Together, they were part of the team that steered the company to revenues of over £250 million in just eight years.
Talking about xDesign’s senior hires, xDesign’s founder and CEO, Euan Andrews, said: “This year has seen us make a number of strategic decisions, each preparing the way for us to meet ambitious growth targets.
“Securing minority investment from Soho Capital; our joining of forces with CreateFuture, and now the appointment of Grant and Susheel can all be seen as important milestones on our growth journey.
“In making these latest appointments, we now have two senior figures that not only bring a wealth of proven leadership experience but also provide us with the knowledge and expertise we need to expand and consolidate our footprint in a number of important industry sectors.
“Both are also huge advocates of the award-winning people-first culture we’ve built here at xDesign – one that continues to unleash the potential of our people, clients and the communities we collaborate with.”
As part of his new role, Grant will be responsible for growing and strengthening xDesign’s business development team, whilst also supporting its marketing and client partnership functions to build a scalable platform for demand generation.
Grant himself commented: “I’m joining xDesign at an extremely pivotal moment in its growth journey. It’s an organisation known for the quality of its work, a collaborative and multidisciplinary approach to delivery, and an award-winning culture – one that puts its own people, its clients, and the communities it works within, front and centre.
“This combination is the perfect starting point when it comes to building a digital consultancy that can add so much more value to people’s lives – whether clients or end users.
“I’ve worked with Susheel for the past eight years and between us we have a raft of experience and approaches that will support xDesign in reaching new audiences in a variety of industry sectors – financial services and the public sector being just two of these.”
In joining xDesign, Susheel will work with its extended leadership team to focus on structuring its go-to-market and growth approaches.
He’ll be focused on consolidating the company’s profile in the industries it already works within, whilst driving greater awareness of it in those that it’s looking to make a bigger impact within.
Susheel also added: “xDesign’s phenomenal growth to date can be attributed to its strong belief in the power of company culture, its unwavering focus on employee wellbeing, and its proven track record of technical excellence.
“These are all elements which perfectly align with my own values and which I believe give us an edge in what can sometimes seem like a largely homogenous digital consulting market.
“I’m particularly excited to put my experience of working with Public Sector clients to good use – supporting the company in making positive impacts on the lives of those using vital public services.
“I’ll be playing an active role in leading the xDesign charge into new sectors as well as helping it to provide more value in those it’s already serving.”
Compounding IT experts’ concern is the fact that 74% believe cybercriminals are harnessing AI with equal or even greater success than digital trust professionals.
However, these growing fears have not translated into widespread action: only around a quarter (28%) perceive AI-related risks as an immediate priority.
Further, a scant 10% of organisations have formal policies in place for governing AItechnology’s use, with 29% having no policy, nor any plans to implement one.
“In today’s rapidly evolving technological landscape, AI will play a key role in transforming industries as a whole,” said Chris Dimitriadis, global chief strategy officer at ISACA.
“Holistic digital trust framework implementations are a prerequisite to enjoying the benefits of AI in a more secure, privacy-friendly, ethically acceptable and risk-controlled manner.”
Despite these concerns, businesses are acknowledging the benefits that AI offers, with almost one in five (19%) increasing the number of jobs for AI-related functions in the next 12 months.
What’s more, respondents feel it will have a positive impact on their industry (60%), their organisation (54%), and their career (46%) over the next 5 years.
Just 7% of organisations are providing all employees with AI training, however. This is in spite of the fact that nearly 4 in 5 (79%) agree that many jobs will be modified by AI in the next 5 years.
On this, Erik Prusch, the chief executive of ISACA, remarked: “Business and IT professionals are aware of the potential positive impact of AI, but to reap the benefits they must ensure the staff in their organisations are trained on how to use AI effectively and safely.
“By providing comprehensive training as part of an overarching AI strategy, businesses can stay ahead of the curve and ensure the safety and security of their operations while promoting long-term business success.”
The data shows that the amount of venture capital received by firms in Glasgow has grown by 211% since 2019, and with $109 million (£89m) being raised in the first three quarters of 2023.
Following Glasgow in third place is Birmingham, with a 195% positive change in VC investment over the last four years, and with $94m (£77m) raised this year.
Belfast is at the top of the ranking board however, with a 221% increase in VC funding over the same period. That said, it attained the comparatively lower amount of $80m (£65m) in 2023 so far.
Among those seeing a fall in VC investment since 2019 are two areas of the ‘golden triangle’ — South East England’s cluster comprising London, Cambridge, and Oxford.
Specifically, London’s amount of VC funding has dropped by 48%, while the figure for Cambridge is 53%. Oxford, meanwhile, saw a positive change of 103%.
As a whole, the UK remains the leading destination for VC investment in Europe, with the country bringing in $15 billion (£12b) this year and an expectation that $18b (£14b) will be raised by the end of the year. Although, there has been a 5% fall in the amount of VC investment raised since 2019.
The UK also retains its position as the third highest ranking country for VC funding, with the USA and China ranking in first and second place respectively.
However, the level of investment has fallen at varying degrees for eight of the top ten countries since 2019, apart from France and Sweden which saw increases of 27% and 50%.
In terms of the UK’s foremost segments for investment in 2023, biotech, mobility, energy storage, and clean energy were the leading sub industries.
In more Glasgow-focussed news, DIGIT reported last month that the area saw the highest business creation per capita out of all Scottish local authorities in the first half of 2023. During H1, 22 Glasgow-based businesses were created a day.
Regarding investment, Glasgow City Council unveiled its new ethical investment strategy at the end of September, in a bid to help shape the city’s financial landscape until 2030.
The sectors at the forefront of the new initiative include life sciences, precision medicine, the digital and creative economy, the green economy, and satellite and spacetechnology.
The Chambers’ Quarterly Economic Indicator is Scotland’s longest-running business survey, operating since 1990. Conducted between August 21 and September 18 2023, the respondents to this survey were 93% SMEs, businesses with less than 250 employees.
In particular, it found that concern over interest rates has seen a significant increase, rising from 37% of firms last quarter to now half of firms, marking a five-year survey high.
Speaking on this, Stephen Leckie, Scottish Chambers of Commerce’s president, said: “Our data shows that firms are becoming more concerned of rises in interest rates, which are designed to suppress consumer spend and make borrowing more expensive, both of which significantly impact firms.
“Looking ahead, we would urge the Bank of England to provide clarity on the future direction of interest rates or begin to allow time for the lag between rate hikes and the full effect on spending to be fully observed, so that there is less risk of causing unnecessary economic damage.”
Relatedly, while worries about inflation remain high among all respondents, it eased generally over the quarter down to 70% from 75% in the last quarter.
The Chambers’ latest survey also uncovered that while more Scots firms continue to report rises in investment than falls on balance, over half (55%) have reported no changes to total investment, another five-year high.
“Scottish firms and indeed firms across the UK are actively pausing investment decisions,” said Leckie.
“Businesses urgently require upcoming fiscal events to provide some respite for those struggling to survive and incentives for those looking to expand.
“To that end, we urge the Scottish Government to use the progress made through the New Deal for Business to demonstrate that it can listen to business and take action that will support growth, such as maintaining a fair personal taxation regime, reviewing non-domestic rates, and reducing regulation.”
While on the matter of investment, the data also shows that over half of firms (57%) have reported no changes to training investment levels, yet another five-year survey high.
More positively, fewer Scots firms indicated that they will raise prices this quarter compared to last, with just under half of firms (48%) saying they will raise prices compared to 55% last quarter.
Remarking on the survey’s results as a whole, Leckie stated that “These results indicate challenging trading conditions for firms, with inflation, interest rates, and labour shortages preventing growth and delaying investment. For too many businesses, the priority is firmly stuck on survival.
“Whilst business confidence is starting to pick up from the low levels of 2022, this renewed optimism is not translating into sustained performance and output from firms necessary to get our economy firing again.
“If Scotland is to maintain its competitiveness domestically and internationally, direction and impetus is needed from government north and south of the border in upcoming budget statements. These must outline clear steps to support business which instil confidence for investment and help stimulate growth.”
A team of Heriot-Watt University experts are contributing to the development of techniques to precisely remove brain cancer cells using lasers.
The project, led by Imperial College London, has received £500,000 in funding from the UK’s Medical Research Council as part of a wider bid to tackle hard-to-treat cancers.
The Heriot-Watt team will provide laser ablation work for the project, which involves removing tissue via laser beam exposure. This will then be combined with Imperial’s technique for diagnosing cancer, which incorporates metabolic profiling equipment and offers real-time data on the cancer’s nature.
The collaborative project, known as “Developing Novel Technology for Data Driven Clinical Decision Making,” will focus on Glioblastoma (GBM), an aggressive and fast-growing brain tumour.
Speaking on it, Imperial’s Dr Lauren Ford and overall project lead, said: “Glioblastoma brain tumours are deadly and incurable. Effective treatment options for GBM are urgently needed. The extent of surgical GBM tumour resection substantially impacts patient survival, but damage to normal brain can severely affect quality of life.”
Dr Ford said that, in all cases, some cancer cells remain and are treated with radiochemotherapy. However, this subsequent treatment only delays tumour regrowth and patient death by an average of three months.
Applied optics and photonics expert professor Jonathan Shepard, from the university’s Institute of Photonics and Quantum Sciences, is leading the Heriot-Watt laser team.
“The unique proprieties of lasers allow them to be tightly focused and deliver energy that can vaporise material in an incredibly small region without affecting or heating the surrounding area. Lasers therefore have the potential to precisely remove tumour tissue whilst leaving vital, healthy tissue undamaged,” he said.
“In this project, we will investigate fine-tuning the laser parameters to simultaneously remove tissue and generate a vapour plume full of biological information that could be used for diagnosis in a way that current surgical tools cannot.
“The aim is to provide a more complete removal of the tumour and a highly customised treatment pathway to tackle recurrence. Funding such as this scheme, that allow adventurous research ideas, enables us to investigate new combinations of technologies which have the potential to transform cancer treatment in the future.”
UK science and technology secretary Michelle Donelan commented on the funding scheme, which also provided £500,000 each to three other cancer-combatting projects. “By investing in high-risk but high-reward techniques – including artificial intelligence – we are backing our ambitious, world class researchers to build on generations of discoveries and give more people a fighting chance to live long and healthy lives,” she said.
The remotely piloted aircraft, dubbed “Protector”, will be able to undergo land and maritime surveillance to track threats, counter terrorism, and support UK civil authorities, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said.
Equipped with a “suite” of surveillance equipment, and with the ability to fly for more than 30 hours and up to 40,000 feet, the MOD stated the aircraft offers a “critical global surveillance capability for the UK.”
Protector will accept the Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition, and Reconnaissance (ISTAR) roles currently undertaken by the Reaper aircraft, which has been used by the RAF for more than 15 years.
The first phase of tests, beginning this week, involves ground testing of satellite links and taxi procedures, as well as take-off and landing trials.
While one Protector is currently present at RAF Waddington, the arrival of 15 other Protectors from General Atomics — the US-based defence company that designs and manufactures unmanned aerial vehicles and radar systems — will be phased. though all aircraft are expected to be delivered and in service by July 2025.
Air Commodore Alex Hicks, the senior responsible owner of the Protector programme, said that the arrival of the first aircraft is the “culmination of years of work by many personnel across the whole of the MOD.
“The ISR Capability Team will be working with 56 Sqn, our test and evaluation experts, will [sic] put the aircraft through its paces to ensure it is ready for operational service next year, whilst the newly reformed 31 Sqn will focus on preparing to operate the aircraft in service.
“This is an important milestone for the Programme, Air Force and wider defence and I am delighted to see Protector at RAF Waddington.”
James Cartlidge MP, the defence procurement minister, also commented: “The UK’s world-class Protector aircraft will emphasise our ultra-modern surveillance, intelligence, and precision strike capabilities, ensuring we are ready to monitor and protect against potential adversaries around the globe.
“With the first aircraft at RAF Waddington ready to begin trials, we will once again demonstrate how we are spearheading military defence technology.”
Relatedly, surveillance and security were topics that Daniel Cuthbert, a self-professed “creaky old hacker” delved into during his keynote at DIGIT’s Scot-Secure West summit last month.
Following pilots launched in Liverpool and Teesside earlier this year, a further eight innovation “Launchpads” will be rolled out across the UK, backed by £75m in funding.
The Launchpads programme aims to support regional clusters of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in designated high-tech sectors, including key industries such as agri-tech, renewable energy, and digital healthcare solutions.
Local businesses can apply for support that’s tailored to the needs of each business cluster, helping to drive increased innovation, employment, economic growth, and productivity. Innovate UK is providing each Launchpad with up to £7.5m.
Announcing the funding today, George Freeman MP, minister of state at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, said: “The UK science, research and innovation economy is not just the ‘golden triangle’ of Cambridge-Oxford-London. It is all around the UK.
“From Glasgow satellite manufacturing to Manchester materials, Teeside hydrogen and Liverpool life sciences, alongside as many as 25 other globally recognised hubs around the UK — we have world class R&D — and supporting these regional clusters of world class innovation is central to our plan to make the UK an ‘Innovation Nation’.
“That is why we have launched our flagship Launchpads programme – and this £75 million investment will support high-growth companies to build the industries of tomorrow – in sectors from renewable energy through to digital health. These Launchpads will play a pivotal role in growing our local economies, creating jobs and levelling up the UK.”
In Scotland, there’ll be a Bio-based Manufacturing Launchpad, helping to drive innovation in bio-based manufacturing and promoting sustainable production methods.
Speaking on it, John Lamont, the UK government minister for Scotland, said: “Scotland is a world leader in scientific innovation and research and development across a range of hi-tech sectors.
“This funding from the UK government for a Scottish Bio-based Manufacturing Launchpad, connected to the other clusters across the UK, will help boost economic growth and ensure our businesses are at the forefront of sustainable production techniques.”
The other clusters, alongside the already-trialled Liverpool and Teesside clusters, include:
Digital Technologies Launchpad, in North East England.
Health Technologies Launchpad, in West Yorkshire.
Agri-tech and Food Tech Launchpad, in Eastern England.
Marine and Maritime Launchpad, in the Great South West.
Immersive and Creative Industries Launchpad, centred on Coventry and Warwickshire in the West Midlands.
Life and Health Sciences Launchpad, in Northern Ireland.
Net Zero Industry Launchpad, in South West Wales.
The Launchpads and the corresponding funding follows a competitive bidding process from more than 40 proposals from across the UK, put forward by local leaders and evaluated by a panel of Innovate UK directors, experts, and academics.
On the programme as a whole, Indro Mukerjee, the chief executive of Innovate UK, commented: “Innovate UK is building strong regional partnerships across the UK to support local innovation and commercialisation.
“Our new Launchpads will help to attract further private sector R&D investment into innovation clusters, growing local economies and delivering societal and economic benefits to local communities.”
Known as the Shared Rural Network (SRN), the industry-led, multi-phase project is aiming to provide reliable mobile broadband to 95% of the country by early 2027, though it’s previously been said that the coverage could be delivered by 2025.
For its first phase, the UK’s four mobile network operators (MNOs) are investing £532m to tackle “partial not-spots” — areas which receive coverage from one but not all operators. The UK government is providing £500m for the project’s second phase, in which areas of no coverage, or “total not-spots,” will be addressed.
However, according to The Telegraph, Vodafone, Three, and Virgin Media O2 have asked the UK government for the first phase’s deadline of June 2024 to be extended by up to two years, due to the “struggle to build new masts in time.” Sources have reportedly said that “it had taken as long as 500 days to receive planning approvals for some sites,” and delays resulting from the pandemic were also cited.
While a spokesperson from Three acknowledged the delays and extension in a statement published by The Telegraph, they also stated that the project remains “on track.”
They said: “We are on track to deliver the overall January 2027 target for 4G geographic coverage under the SRN programme having already built 100 sites and secured planning on 80pc of the new sites that we have committed to.
“However, we have recently written to the government asking for an extension to the June 2024 interim target which was agreed immediately prior to the Covid lockdowns and has been impacted by delays associated with the pandemic.”
A Vodafone spokesperson also allegedly said: “We remain committed to delivering on all elements of the SRN programme and have successfully introduced 4G to rural locations across the UK as part of the wider project which is due for delivery by January 2027.”
Further, a spokesperson for Virgin Media O2 purportedly stated that: “We’re continuing to invest and deliver these upgrades at pace and we expect to either meet or come very close to meeting our own individual target. We are in regular discussions with government and industry, and remain committed to delivering the full benefits of the SRN as soon as possible.”
The reports come as the National Audit Office, the UK’s public spending watchdog, is undertaking a review of the SRN. The findings, including whether the government is on track to deliver reliable mobile connectivity across the UK, are scheduled to be released in Winter 2023/24.
Alongside the Shared Rural Network, other broadband-focussed initiatives such as R100, a Scottish government infrastructure programme, and Project Gigabit, the UK government’s flagship fast broadband programme, are also underway.
A few months ago, in June, DIGIT reported on findings from Compare the Market which found that five rural Scottish local authorities — including the Orkney and Shetland Islands — have the UK’s slowest average download speeds, further highlighting the current rural digital divide present in the nation.
In its new report, the PAC highlighted that only 57% of all electricity and gas meters in Britain are smart as of March 2023, despite the rollout being in operation for over a decade — and it being four years since the rollout was first slated to be completed.
The Committee discovered those with traditional meters are now less interested in having the smart technology. Reports of “bad practice last winter around forced switching of consumers onto smart prepayment meters” was relayed as one of the potential reasons why consumers may be put off.
However, energy suppliers are feeling the pressure of government-imposed smart meter targets, which can translate into putting pressure on the general public to install, the inquiry heard.
Complicating things further are the technical issues: around 3 million (9%) of smart meters aren’t working properly as of March 2023, the report noted. Further, components for an estimated seven million smart meters will need to be replaced as they’ll lose functionality when 2G and 3G mobile communications networks shut down.
Most worrying, however, is the Committee’s concerns that smart meters may not be achieving the consumer benefits they’re supposed to in regard to energy savings.
In light of these issues, the PAC has recommended that the UK Government work with Smart Energy GB — the non-profit body helping to drive consumer engagement — to review its public engagement strategy.
It also suggested that the government update its evidence base on the benefits consumers are actually receiving, and to help ensure that suppliers use future-proofed technology in all new smart meter installations, among a series of other actions.
Speaking on the rollout and the PAC report, Dame Meg Hillier MP, chair of the Committee, said: “The rollout of smart meters was first conceived in 2008, with a planned completion date of 2019. Some 15 years later and four years after that missed target, and its vision of access and support for every household to control their energy efficiency remains a distant one.
“There are functionality issues with many, millions will have to be replaced when they become obsolete, and the evidence is unclear whether their benefits are even working as advertised.
“On top of this, smart meters have serious reputational obstacles to overcome with the public. In particular, our inquiry has found that consumers’ enthusiasm for adopting one has been understandably harmed by recent shocking reports of forced installations.
“The Government must now get onto the front foot and explain how it is going to sell this troubled programme to the public – and how it will successfully deliver during a cost of living crisis for those it ought to benefit the most.”
Delivered by Anglia Ruskin University and part of the Accelerated Access Collaborative (AAC), the programme is cited as the biggest entrepreneurial workforce development programme of its kind, and is open to all of NHS Scotland’s staff.
The programme itself is underpinned by support from a coordination group consisting of InnoScot Health and other partners across Scotland. The partners include the Digital Health & Care Innovation Centre (DHI), Scottish Enterprise, NHS Education Scotland, Scottish Health and Industry Partnership Group (SHIP), and the Scottish Government.
“We want to encourage NHS Scotland staff with great ideas that are at any stage of development to get involved in the programme and maximise their learning, in turn accelerating the introduction of ground-breaking treatments and diagnostics. This is a great time to apply,” said head of project management at InnoScot Health, Gillian Henderson.
Last month, InnoScot Health hosted a webinar, “Empowering healthcare professionals to transform services through innovation,” which discussed the experiences of entrepreneurs who partook in previous CEP cohorts.
The year-long programme is free to join, and offers mentoring, bespoke commercial education, customer matching, resources, development tools and access to a community of like-minded individuals and industry experts.
Dedicated learning on how to build a startup or develop an intrapreneurial idea is delivered as a series of educational events, known as “pit stops,” which can be attended either virtually or in-person.
The most recent pit stop took place in Glasgow on the evening of October 11th, providing a platform to take stock of progress and encourage networking while also offering an opportunity to hear from founders, industry experts, and CEP partners DHI. It was followed by a second, full day of learning.
“It has been inspiring to be part of this inclusive, progressive programme and it will be rewarding indeed to see a new Scottish cohort go from strength to strength for innovation benefits that can be adopted back into our NHS. This is an exciting time for all involved,” Henderson continued.
“We enjoyed meeting budding applicants at the programme taster in Glasgow and hearing what they hope to achieve. Likewise, our aim will be to make a valuable contribution to their success by lending our own innovation expertise and support alongside other key organisations.
“Fundamentally, CEP is an exceptional opportunity to empower the diverse NHS Scotland workforce during this important period of recovery, renewal, and transformation by creating a space where NHS staff can develop their innovation or idea without having to leave the health service.”
The coordination group will assist Scottish candidates on their innovation journey and help them to identify support, while also providing networking and collaboration opportunities across the wider Scottish innovation and entrepreneurial landscape.
Applications for the eighth cohort are encouraged before 29 October.
Amid the increase, Hoxhunt incorporated QR codes into its flagship project, the Hoxhunt Challenge, which quantifies human cybersecurity risk and resiliency through simulated attacks across a series of participating organisations in large industries.
The study, which was conducted among a pool of nearly 600,000 employees of varying seniority, found that slightly over one-third (36%) of people successfully identified and reported such an attack. Meanwhile, more than half (59%) didn’t recognise it as a threat, while 5.5% of people scanned the QR code or clicked an accompanying link.
However, the likelihood of successfully identifying and reporting an attack, missing it (i.e. not identifying nor reporting the attack, but also not taking any action that would actively grant attackers access to confidential data), and scanning a QR code or clicking an accompanying link differs by both industry and job function.
Organisations situated in the legal and business services sector successfully identified and reported phishing attacks integrating QR codes 63% of the time, compared to IT’s 44%, and retail’s 18% — the lowest success score of all industries. The retail industry, at 79%, was the industry most likely to miss such a phishing attack.
In terms of job function, legal staff were most likely to successfully identify and report QR code-enabled phishing attacks (78%), while those working in communications were the least likely, at 64%. Communications staff also scanned a QR code or clicked an accompanying phishing link at 1.5% and 3.3% respectively, higher than any other job function in total.
In light of these findings, the human risk management platform has reiterated the need for continuous employee cybersecurity training, stating that “Failing to provide it promotes a reality of increased risk where organizational data is more of a liability than anything else.”
It also advocates for higher employee engagement as to reduce human risk, and to undergo proper employee onboarding to help mitigate potential risks and vulnerabilities.
QR codes aside, DIGIT last reported on research from Hoxhunt back in March of this year, when the company found that humans are still outperforming generative AI programs when conducting phishing email attacks — at least for now.
Financial data is as inherently interesting as it is illustrative. When examined en-mass, it offers profound insights: what knock-on effects various events and factors, such as economic downturns, have on peoples’ financial situations, for example.
However, considering the highly sensitive nature of financial data, it’s largely been locked away by those for whom financial data is a byproduct of everyday business — not least banks, whose products and services enable the public to receive, store, and use money.
In a concerted effort for the data to be used to drive positive impacts across society, outside organisations have increasingly gained access to the stowed away information. And for Scottish not-for-profit Smart Data Foundry, collaborating with financial institutions and partners in this manner helps it to meet its unique, inspirational mission.
DIGIT recently sat down with Smart Data Foundry’s head of data insights, Rui Cardoso, as well as its head of marketing, Richard Seabrook. We dug into what prompted the organisation’s founding, learned more about the milestones in its journey thus far, and discovered how, exactly, it’s unlocking the power of financial data for positive change.
All Change Starts Somewhere
Smart Data Foundry’s founding is, at least partly, owed to the recent evolution of the UK’s finance and banking sector. In early 2018 — and as part of a bid to spur innovation, known as Open Banking — new legislation came into force that ushered large financial institutions to securely share data with approved organisations.
Amid this change, Stephen Ingledew (chairman, Fintech Scotland), Gavin Littlejohn (founder, Financial Data and Technology Association), and Kevin Collins (assistant principal, University of Edinburgh) spotted an opportunity for the incoming data to be leveraged for societal benefit. As Seabrook explained, “The idea was that there was so much value locked up in financial data, and if that data and corresponding value could be unlocked for public good, that would be an incredible thing to do.”
However, before its official founding, the co-founders-to-be began applying for the funding needed to properly kickstart the organisation’s mission-led efforts. During this process, they received assistance from a team from Data-Driven Innovation, a University of Edinburgh initiative working to bolster the data credentials and capabilities of south east Scotland.
As a result, in August 2020, the considerable sum of £23 million was granted via UKRI — the UK government body for providing research and innovation funding. As Seabrook said succinctly, “We put together a very compelling bid to UKRI’s Strength in Places Fund that got us going with seed funding to last over a five-year period.”
In September of the same year, another significant milestone was achieved: a data sharing agreement with the NatWest Group, whose banks include NatWest and Royal Bank of Scotland. This then prompted Smart Data Foundry’s official founding, as well as its first projects, with one in particular cited by Seabrook as indicative of how it facilitates positive change.
Projects With Purpose
The project in question, and much like Smart Data Foundry’s founding, was inspired by an external event — though one not as positive. In light of the profound impact COVID-19 was having on society and the economy alike, the organisation decided to create an economic dashboard to garner insights into how people were earning, spending, and saving.
To facilitate the dashboard, and courtesy of the new agreement, the not-for-profit utilised de-identified data from a sample of over one million NatWest Group customers. Through the process of de-identification, which was carried out by NatWest Group’s team, the data no longer contained personal information — thereby protecting the individuals’ privacy.
While being used by Smart Data Foundry’s team of data scientists, the de-identified dataset was stored in a secure digital facility, known as a “Safe Haven.” The particular Safe Haven utilised by Smart Data Foundry for its projects is operated by the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre, based at the University of Edinburgh.
Once built, the insight-laden dashboard — which was regularly refreshed with new data — was then shared with the UK Government and devolved governments. It “gave them the tools to help make better policy decisions in terms of how to build back from the pandemic,” Seabrook said, enabling targeted support for the most impacted people.
For Seabrook, this particular early project speaks to the organisation’s ability to deliver against its purpose. “It was a really good example of how we were able to access previously inaccessible data as an unbiased, independent organisation, and present the hard facts of what was going on. In terms of unlocking the value of that data, creating impact, and being able to help improve people’s lives, then tick, tick, tick.”
A similarly representative example mentioned by Seabrook concerns a project from 2022: The UK Government’s Small Business Commissioner, Liz Barclay, had gotten in touch with the not-for-profit to research and investigate the impact of late invoice payments on small businesses.
“The general view was that small businesses were getting paid later and later, with the effects of Brexit and COVID making the situation worse,” recounted Seabrook. “But after looking at over 58 million invoices over an 11-year period, thanks to data from Sage [another of its data partners], it actually showed that the speed of invoice-to-payment had halved over the last decade, rather than got worse. It still showed there was a 40% cohort of people that continue to get paid late, but the overall situation had got significantly better.”
While the findings didn’t neatly align with the hypothesis that invoice payments were getting worse, it allowed Smart Data Foundry to instead present the truth of the matter. This then helped to positively reorient official efforts made to support small businesses. “It was great to go back to the Small Business Commissioner, to give her the tools to then go back to government and say: ‘Hey, there’s been real progress made here. But instead, these are the problems that we really need to tackle,’” said Seabrook.
These are but two instances of Smart Data Foundry’s purposeful work that was made possible through collaboration with data partners. It’s one of the organisation’s most recent projects that’s gained particular recognition and acclaim, however, not least from the new Scottish First Minister, Humza Yousaf.
Smart Data Foundry’s Head of Data Insights, Rui Cardoso, is no stranger to the intersection of innovation and the public sector. Prior to joining the not-for-profit, he was a manager for CivTech — the Scottish Government programme helping to plug public sector firms’ problems through specifically-built, innovative solutions.
Cardoso’s tenure at CivTech gave him the “great opportunity of going around the public sector, and understanding the challenges they’re facing in terms of bringing in things like data and technology to help improve processes or make better decisions.” Joining Smart Data Foundry in June 2022, these experiences served him well for overseeing the project that was recently publicly praised by the First Minister: a cost-of-living dashboard for East Renfrewshire Council.
After the turmoil of COVID, and then the advent of the cost-of-living crisis, the local authority wanted to support its constituents’ financial lives more effectively, leaning on data to assist their efforts — something Smart Data Foundry could certainly help with. Following initial conversation, the not-for-profit embarked on a pilot project for and with East Renfrewshire Council.
“After many iterations, we came up with a map-based dashboard where we could overlay indicators and metrics from finance data,” Cardoso explained. “For example: the percentage of people within a specific area who are in financial distress, are consistently using their overdraft facilities, or have low disposable income.”
To deepen insights even further, demographic data from the council was also brought in. This means staff can not only see how certain areas are being financially impacted, but also the effect on specific groups within those areas, such as families with three or more children, or young mothers under the age of 19, without ever identifying the specific individuals within these groups. This level of granularity ultimately means the supportive measures taken forward can be as targeted as possible.
To ensure that the dashboard is both viable and valuable, the data underpinning it is refreshed every five weeks, thereby providing council members with the oversight needed to determine whether their measures are successful. As Cardoso described, “If there is an intervention made, we can then check back on it: Is it working? Do we need to go back and do more? Do we need to pivot what we’re doing to be more effective?”
The intrinsic benefits of being in possession of such a platform has meant that the dashboard has been fully adopted by East Renfrewshire Council. And off the back of it, we will likely see more dashboards like this — and other useful variants — coming out of Smart Data Foundry for the public sector. As Cardoso stated, “Things have rapidly evolved since we were able to demonstrate what we’ve been doing with East Renfrewshire. Now we’re having conversations at both a local and regional level.”
While the adoption of the dashboard and the interest it’s spurred are undoubtedly causes for celebration, Smart Data Foundry is by no means resting on its laurels. A dedication to its mission means the not-for-profit’s continuing to press on with new and impactful work.
Impact Is the Point
When asked about what’s currently in progress at Smart Data Foundry, one particularly noteworthy development that Seabrook touched on involves the marrying of two separate but wholly connected forms of data.
“Something that we’re actively pursuing at the moment is: How can we start to join up health data with financial data?,” Seabrook disclosed. “I think the combination of those two will create insights that will be unique in so many ways especially as, normally, those sensitive datasets never talk to each other.”
As he explained further, “You’d be able to unlock answers around the economic impact of Long COVID, for example. Or, better understand what comes first: Is it financial vulnerability that impacts mental health? Or is it mental health that impacts financial vulnerability?”
To help realise this, the not-for-profit is working with the Usher Institute — a University of Edinburgh medical research centre — to understand ways of safely putting those datasets together to reveal hidden insights.
The value that could be derived in this particular instance, and not least during a joint cost-of-living crisis and mental health crisis, could be remarkable — which is exactly why it’s being explored. Because, as was wholly clear from our interview, impact is the point for Smart Data Foundry.
