Public Sector AI Task Force Meeting February 2025

Minutes

Welcome and updates - AI Policy, Scottish Government

• A reminder that the UKG Copyright and AI consultation is currently out for another week and closing on 25 February.

• The UKG have issued an expression of interest on AI Growth Zones targeting regional and local authorities and industry, which closes on 28 February.

• UKG have published their response to the call for views on cyber security of AI.  They have announced steps to help companies developing AI to better protect those systems and applications from growing cyber security threats through a new voluntary Code of Practice

Presentations

AI Risk Awareness Sessions - Scottish Government 

• The team from Saidot, who built and support the infrastructure for the Scottish AI Register, delivered sessions on managing and mitigating AI risk.

• A dedicated space within the register will be developed for separate organisations to host their risk management documents.

Policy Analysis and AI adoption - Tech UK

• techUK are a membership body for the​ tech industry in the UK with over 1000 members. Their work is split into three key focus areas of developing markets, championing tech and innovation and shaping policy and regulation.

AI Opportunities Action Plan

• The UKG AI Opportunities Action Plan, published in January 2025 is not an operational roadmap but rather a strategic direction for AI policy.  This will be refined through the Spending Review, Industrial Strategy, and Cross-Government Review of Digital Technology.

• The 6 Key Pillars of the Plan are around:

  • Compute access – expanding UK AI compute capacity 20x by 2030

  • AI Growth Zones – establishing regional hubs for AI innovation

  • Skills and talent – seeks to address AI workforce

  • Regulation – reviewing regulatory barriers to AI-driven economic growth

  • Data access – advancing the National Data

  • AI procurement – AI procurement with mission-specific tenders

Paris AI Action Summit

• The summit took place between 10 and 11 February and brought together almost 100 countries and over 1,000 stakeholders.

• The three high level critical areas of focus were around accelerating global AI development, managing the AI transition while protecting individual freedoms and aligning AI with humanist values.

• Following the summit an International AI Safety Report was published that brings together expert perspectives on AI capabilities and risks.

• The AI Action Summit Declaration was signed by 60 countries, which did not include the UK.  The declaration sets out an ambition to reduce digital divides by promoting AI accessibility, and ensuring the transparent, safe and trustworthy development of AI. 

AI Adoption

• Within the education and health areas, there is an ever-increasing interest in growing the research in the application of AI.

• Use cases include disease diagnosis, health monitoring, personalised learning tailored and lesson planning.

Update on Gemini Glow - Education Scotland

• The short life project pilot took part over 6 months to explore the use of Google Gemini on the Glow platform.  This was piloted by 2 local authorities with 30 teachers involved.

• The research looked at key themes around learner assessment, personalised learning and reducing the administrative workload.

• The feedback on the use of Gemini was overwhelmingly positive with teachers using the AI tool for lessons, quiz development, assessments and creating inclusive learning materials This reduced workload and boosted creativity.

• Following on from this pilot, access to Google Gemini has been expanded to all local authority teaching staff who are Google users on Glow.

Working Groups

Security

Space to discuss AI as both an opportunity and a threat in relation to delivering secure systems and organisations. Can AI help us better identify fraud or systems at risk, and how can we protect our organisations from the risk which AI enabled attacks pose.

Business

Group to discuss how we might best support businesses and people as processes become increasingly AI driven. Also to consider innovation and how we might promote Scotland’s businesses and share our developments with the world.