Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what steps his Department is taking to invest in artificial intelligence.

The Defence AI Strategy, published in June this year, signalled our objective to transform into an AI-ready organisation that can exploit AI technologies at pace and with ambition. The new Defence AI Centre is central to our efforts, working with teams across the Department to champion and enable the wide-scale adoption of these technologies. A wide range of Research and Development projects are underway, exploring opportunities to transform our front-line military capabilities and ‘back-office’ corporate systems.

We are also continuing to invest in the Defence Science & Technology Laboratories (Dstl) science & technology programme, which has focus areas that include AI, autonomy, and data science.