Oxfordshire is set to play a central role in developing the UK’s next generation of artificial intelligence. The University of Oxford has been selected to host one of two new government-backed AI research labs supported by up to £60 million in funding through UKRI’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. The investment will support pioneering work over the next six years, with the aim of making advanced AI cheaper, more reliable, more open and easier for businesses, researchers and public services to use.
At the heart of the announcement is the British Open-ended Learning and Discovery Lab, or BOLD, which will be led by Associate Professor Jakob Foerster at the University of Oxford’s Department of Engineering Science. While today’s leading AI systems often depend on ever-larger datasets and huge amounts of computing power, BOLD will pursue a different route, discovering fundamentally new ways to build AI that are more efficient, more open and better aligned with human needs, rather than only scaling existing methods.
The initiative brings together researchers from Oxford, UCL and Imperial College London, alongside industry and technology partners, to create a focused national research effort. The Oxford team will act as integrator, reflecting the University’s collaborative AI@Oxford initiative and its strengths in machine learning, AI safety, ethics, and robotics. With its Laboratory for AI Safety Research, Institute for Ethics in AI and the Erlangen mathematical foundations of intelligence hub, the University has extensive expertise in applying AI across areas including wildlife monitoring, climate-resilient agriculture, autonomous robotics, clinical research and disease investigation.
BOLD will seek both technical breakthroughs and practical impact. Its research will explore new ways to train AI that require less computing power, memory and energy. It aims to develop AI systems that work with people, for example helping researchers generate ideas, test hypotheses and accelerate scientific discovery. It will also focus on helping robots and other physical systems to learn and adapt under real-world constraints.
Oxford’s BOLD, together with the UCL-led SOFAIR lab, will strengthen the UK’s sovereign AI capability, reduce reliance on a small number of major technology providers and help ensure that breakthroughs translate into benefits for society.