Leading the AI Industrial Revolution: Five’s unique constellation of research talent
The so called ‘fourth’ Industrial Revolution, this time powered by breakthroughs in Artificial Intelligence (AI), will bring about profound changes. Harnessed in the right way, these developments can deliver huge societal and economic benefits. With its outstanding mix of academic and entrepreneurial talent, the UK is in a prime position to lead this revolution, just as it led the first.
British academic excellence, powering business
Several of our universities are global leaders in Artificial Intelligence. These institutions have long been partnering with global companies on research, and in the future UK businesses need to be able to make the very most of this expertise too.
It’s vital that British businesses have access to the brightest minds and latest thinking in AI. Excelling in data science is critical to the success of our country’s companies. AI is pivotal to competing in industries key to our existing economy, e.g. financial asset management, trading, risk management, fraud prevention, medical diagnosis and drug creation, to name but a few, and is the foundation of revolutionary new industries such as autonomous mobility services.
The UK is ready for a standout global AI company
The UK has been home to interesting AI companies for some time. Perhaps most famously, DeepMind Technologies, a spinout from UCL which was acquired by Google in 2014 which, in addition to the headline grabbing game-playing activities, has been producing cutting edge research in the fields of reinforcement learning and applying that to practical projects like energy saving and medical diagnosis. Many other smaller, UK-founded AI businesses have also been acquired for their talent by large US companies.
While these companies are worthy of emphatic celebration, we’ve not yet witnessed the creation of the large, global, independent AI companies the UK deserves. Building such companies is hard, both technically and commercially. It takes experienced management to successfully navigate the arduous journey from scientific research, to technology development, through industrialisation to globally scaling the business. The deep technical expertise that we have in our universities and research institutions here in the UK must be coupled with engineering management, with product/market fit expertise, with large scale test and validation know-how, as well as fundraising and business management ability. And perhaps most importantly of all, we need grit — the sheer, inspired will to build and deliver transformative technology.
Five is leading the way
Enter Five. Fast-growing, rigorous and ambitious, the company is harnessing all the potential I’ve mentioned. Working on the delivery of a fully autonomous shared transport service in our cities, it’s already leading the way in the UK, and in Europe. The team has achieved so much already, and there’s more on the horizon. In April 2019, we began autonomous testing in London, ahead of launching a trial service later in the year. A fully autonomous service in action in the capital would make a significant difference to Londoners, as well as the environment. As a scientist fascinated by the ways in which AI can enrich people’s lives, I look forward to FiveAI’s cars becoming a regular sight on the city’s streets.
Five is quickly developing and deploying groundbreaking AI technology, to enable their cars to both ‘see’ and make safe, fast, accurate driving decisions. These domains — perception, prediction and planning under uncertainty — contain multifaceted problems. No single research group is leading in all the required components for a complete autonomous driving solution. That’s why FiveAI has brought together a constellation of researchers, from multiple groups. Professor Philip Torr runs one of the largest European computer vision research groups, at Oxford University, for example, and Professor John McDermid is Europe’s foremost authority on safety assurance with respect to high-integrity systems.
This blend of the best is at once highly nuanced and extremely powerful. It’s a rare approach here in the UK, but it shouldn’t be. It’s exactly what the Five team needs in order to accomplish their challenging mission. They’re in the process of solving the autonomous driving challenge and unlocking benefits for society: our cities will be less congested and polluted, people can get back valuable commuting time, accident rates will be cut, and urban travel will be affordable and accessible. With so much to gain in the UK and globally, we can all be invested in Five’s success.
About Professor Andrew Blake, FREng, FRS
Andrew was Distinguished Scientist and Lab Director at Microsoft Research, Founding Director of the Alan Turing Institute, and is now Chair of Samsung’s new AI Centre in the UK. He is a pioneer in the development of the theory and algorithms that make it possible for computers to behave as seeing machines. He has made considerable contributions to the fields of image processing and segmentation as optimisation, as well as visual tracking and real-time, 3D vision. Andrew is an advisor and consultant to Five.
