What if you could carry a 3D scanner in your pocket – and turn the real world into virtual content, instantly?

The science behind XR is older than you think. The 19th century wasn’t just steam engines – it was the birthplace of immersive vision.

Before VR headsets and holograms, there was a painfully shy Victorian physicist with a cardboard contraption and a radical idea about how we see the world.

In recent weeks, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has doubled down on the transformative promise of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). In two public statements, including an interview with Marketing AI Institute and his own blog post, Three Observations, Altman presents AGI as both inevitable and urgently near.

As the world dashes into an AI-driven future, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis recently warned young people: “Learn now or be left behind.”

It’s a provocative message, but it deserves closer scrutiny.

Conversations with young people about AI often fall into two extremes: either it’s their golden ticket to becoming “AI Ninjas,” or it’s the force that will wipe out their future in the arts, sciences, or creative industries.

The reality is more nuanced, and far more important to get right.

Applying for funding through Innovate UK can be a game-changer for your business, but it’s not something to leave until the night before the deadline. With thousands of applicants and only a handful of successful awards, preparation and alignment are everything. Having recently been through the process ourselves, here’s what we’ve learned.

At Aralia Systems, we're redefining what's possible with mobile 3D imaging. As part of the UKRI-funded BridgeAI programme, we recently completed a cutting-edge project to develop AI-driven 3D reconstruction technology that works with just a smartphone. The goal? To combine the power of photogrammetry and photometric stereo into a single, scalable solution, no expensive LiDAR required.

Data-driven AI goes far beyond language models like ChatGPT. Learn how AI is evolving into a tool that can model and replicate complex human tasks, and why this matters for industries like construction, food service, and care.

For small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), innovation isn’t just about breakthrough inventions, it’s about staying relevant, solving real problems, and building better products and services. In a fast-moving economy, the businesses that invest in research and development (R&D) are the ones best positioned to adapt, compete, and grow.

Innovation drives the UK’s most dynamic small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), especially in tech, engineering, and software development. But amid product launches, prototypes, and problem-solving, many businesses overlook a valuable source of funding: the UK government’s R&D tax relief scheme.

The UK government and major technology firms continue to promote an optimistic vision of artificial intelligence, one in which automation enhances productivity, unlocks economic potential, and liberates workers from mundane tasks. In this narrative, AI is not a job killer, but a catalyst for new roles, enabling more creative, efficient, and inclusive economy.

AI promises to modernise the UK’s public sector, from automating routine services to transforming healthcare diagnostics. But the conversation has been dominated by efficiency metrics and budget projections, not ethical consequences or citizen wellbeing.

The UK government is exploring the creation of a copyright-cleared British media asset training dataset, which could provide AI developers with high-quality content for training models. The outcome of this debate will define not just the future of British creative industries, but also the ethical framework that governs AI development.

To support its AI ambitions, the UK is considering sovereign AI compute resources—essentially, government-backed AI supercomputing power to reduce reliance on foreign cloud providers.

But is this the best use of resources, or should the UK partner with industry to build AI infrastructure more efficiently?

The UK government has set an ambitious goal to train tens of thousands of AI professionals, aiming to build a world-class AI workforce. However, AI talent is in high demand globally, and current training initiatives may not be enough to close the skills gap.

The UK government’s proposal for a National Data Library (NDL) aims to create a centralised repository of public datasets to support AI research and innovation. The goal is to make high-quality, well-structured data available to businesses, researchers, and developers, accelerating AI advancements across multiple sectors.

One of the headline proposals in the UK’s AI Opportunities Action Plan is the creation of AI Growth Zones (AIGZs) areas where planning rules will be relaxed to fast-track the development of AI data centres and associated infrastructure. The government hopes this will attract investment, support regional development, and reinforce the UK’s AI capabilities.

The UK government has positioned artificial intelligence (AI) as a central pillar of its economic and industrial strategy. Framed as both a growth engine and a national priority, AI is expected to boost productivity, open up new markets, and reshape public services for the digital age.

In Part One, we explored the different AI deployment options, cloud, on-premise, and edge computing, along with their advantages and trade-offs.