British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he wanted to make the UK an artificial intelligence "superpower", promising to take a pro-innovation approach to regulation, make public data available to researchers and create zones for data centres, Reuters reported.

Starmer, whose Labour government is expected to have little choice but to cut spending after borrowing costs jumped, said he wanted to put AI at the heart of his ambition to grow the economy.

The government says the technology could increase productivity by 1.5% a year, worth an extra 47 billion pounds ($57 billion), annually over a decade.

"Britain will be one of the great AI superpowers," he said on Monday at University College London, noting that the country was already the European leader for AI investment.

"We're going to make the breakthroughs, we're going to create the wealth, and we're going to make AI work for everyone in our country."

Countries across the world are competing to become AI hubs, while balancing the push for growth with the need for some restrictions on the technology.

The world's sixth-largest economy, Britain is only behind the United States and China, when measured by indicators such as AI investment and patents, according to Stanford University.

Starmer said Britain would chart a "pro-growth and pro-innovation" course on regulation.

"I know there are different approaches around the world but we are now in control of our regulatory regime so we will go our own way on this," he said, referring to Britain's departure from the European Union in 2020.

"We will test and understand AI before we regulate it to make sure that when we do it, it's proportionate and grounded."
Britain would put public data, such as information from its state health service, into a "National Data Library", where it would be accessible to researchers subject to trusted copyright rules, he said.

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