Asked by: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what funding UKRI provides to support research and innovation related to pandemic preparedness.
Answered by Andrew Griffith - Minister of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
I refer the Hon. Member to the answer provided to question 25489.
Asked by: John Healey (Labour - Wentworth and Dearne)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, if she will list companies that are prohibited from providing equipment for 5G networks.
Answered by Julia Lopez - Minister of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
On 13 October 2022, the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport issued a Designation Notice to Huawei and a Designated Vendor Direction to 35 telecom providers. The Direction provides twelve specific restrictions/requirements on telecom providers’ use of Huawei equipment and services up to and including the removal of Huawei from 5G networks by the end of 2027.
This is the first time the Government has issued a direction and currently no other directions have been issued.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what her Department's policy is on the procurement of (a) food and (b) drinks produced in Britain for use in its canteens and restaurants.
Answered by Andrew Griffith - Minister of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
The Department is onboarded to the Government Property Agency (GPA). GPA is the landlord or building manager at the Department’s office occupations, where the space is often shared with several other tenant organisations. The Department buys catering services, or a share of, direct from GPA alongside all other building services.
Asked by: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what steps her Department is taking to increase awareness of Horizon Europe funding routes for UK manufacturers.
Answered by Andrew Griffith - Minister of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
I refer the Hon. Member to the answer provided to Question 25490.
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, with reference to her Department's press release entitled AI Safety Institute releases new AI safety evaluations platform, published on 10 May 2024, what steps she is taking to encourage the integration of the Inspect platform in AI development projects in (a) healthcare, (b) transportation and (c) other sectors.
Answered by Saqib Bhatti - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
The AI Safety Institute has responsibility for developing and conducting evaluations on advanced AI systems, including assessing potentially harmful capabilities. As part of this, AISI has released an open-source evaluations platform called Inspect. Inspect is designed to help AI safety researchers build more standardised and reproduceable safety evaluations. Whilst Inspect will not support the development of new AI products and services directly, by open-sourcing the platform we are making it easier to test the safety of new advanced AI systems.
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, with which (a) people and (b) organisations the AI Safety Institute (i) consulted and (ii) collaborated in developing the Inspect toolset; and whether international AI safety bodies were (A) consulted and (B) involved in collaboration.
Answered by Saqib Bhatti - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
The AI Safety Institute is the first state-backed organisation focused on advancing AI safety for the public interest. Safety evaluations for frontier AI systems are often built in non-standardised formats, making it difficult for other organisations to reproduce and verify them. Inspect was developed by AI Safety Institute technical staff in response to this problem. Since making Inspect open-source, technical staff have briefed major AI labs, safety research organisations, academics and government experts on its potential use cases. This should enable closer collaboration across the AI Safety research ecosystem.
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what steps she is taking to monitor the potential impact of the Inspect platform on global AI safety standards.
Answered by Saqib Bhatti - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
The Inspect platform has the potential to unlock more seamless collaboration between AI safety researchers across the world by improving the standardisation and repeatability of safety evaluations. The AI Safety Institute will monitor the uptake of Inspect by drawing on usage data from GitHub, where the toolkit is available for anyone to access, and will continue to engage with AI safety researchers and developers to continue to improve the model. The upcoming AI Seoul Summit will be a valuable forum to deepen AISI’s global collaboration efforts on AI Safety standards.
Asked by: Damien Moore (Conservative - Southport)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what recent steps her Department has taken to help ensure the UK remains at the forefront of safe and regulated research and development for (a) artificial intelligence, (b) machine learning models and (c) deep learning algorithms.
Answered by Saqib Bhatti - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
In February, the Government’s response to the AI Regulation White Paper set out how it is delivering on our regulatory framework. The AI Safety Institute has built state-of-the-art safety testing capacity - and have just published headline results from a recent evaluation exercise. We have also open-sourced our AI safety testing platform (‘Inspect’), empowering safety researchers to conduct their own evaluations; published the International AI Safety Report on 17 May, promoting a shared understanding of AI’s potential impacts; and are co-hosting the next AI Safety Summit in Seoul this week, convening the international community to strengthen AI safety collaboration.
Asked by: Kirsten Oswald (Scottish National Party - East Renfrewshire)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what the cost to the public purse was of Government investment into kidney disease research in 2022-23; and which public bodies provided that investment.
Answered by Andrew Griffith - Minister of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) funds research into the detection, prevention, treatment and underpinning biology of kidney disease, allocated primarily through the Medical Research Council (MRC). Over the period of 2019/20 to 2022/23, MRC has invested nearly £30 million in funding and support for kidney disease research with £6.9 million in 2022/23.
The National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) also provides funding for kidney disease research. I refer the Hon. Member to the answer provided by my Rt. Hon. Friend the member for Pendle on 15 April 2024 (UIN 20328).
https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-questions/detail/2024-03-25/20328
Asked by: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, pursuant to the Answer of 14 May 2024 to Question 25493 on Life Sciences Council, for what reason the Life Sciences Council meeting of May 2024 was rescheduled; how long had the meeting been in place prior to rescheduling; and how much notice was given to the meeting participants of its rescheduling.
Answered by Andrew Griffith - Minister of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
The May 2024 meeting of the Life Sciences Council (LSC) was rescheduled due to Ministerial diary pressures and has now been confirmed for June 2024.
The May meeting was confirmed three months prior to the meeting date. Five weeks’ notice was given to meeting participants of its rescheduling.