Kennedy Scholar and Trustee, Matt Clifford CBE (MIT 2008), has been appointed as the Prime Minister’s AI Opportunities Adviser and will bring together a team across No10 and the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) to seize the opportunities of AI and build the UK’s AI capabilities.
With the recent announcement that the Prime Minister has agreed to take forward all 50 recommendations set out by Matt in his AI Opportunities Action Plan, Matt will now advise ministers across government and work closely with DSIT’s AI Opportunities Unit to drive forward implementation of the Plan.
This will include advising on policy interventions designed to both grow the UK AI sector and support adoption across the economy to boost productivity and improve people’s lives, and to attract top talent and leading entrepreneurs to establish themselves in the UK. Matt will also play an ambassadorial role on AI inside and outside of Government, including with leading AI companies and will advise on steps the UK should take to strengthen its sovereign AI capability.
AI offers opportunities we can’t let slip through our fingers, and these steps put us on the strongest possible footing to ensure AI delivers in all corners of the country, from building skills and talent to revolutionising our infrastructure and compute power.
Matt is cofounder of Entrepreneur First (EF), the leading global talent investor and incubator. He is Chair of ARIA, the UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency, and sits on the board of Code First Girls, which he co-founded in 2013. In 2023, Matt helped create the UK’s AI Safety Institute and served as the Prime Minister’s Representative for the AI Safety Summit hosted at Bletchley Park.
Going to MIT as a Kennedy Scholar gave me a really deep conviction that technology was going to be the main factor in what I wanted to do over the next couple of decades; being in the mix around the application and policy sides of technology really excited me.