Last week, the government made two major announcements on science and innovation. With backing from the Prime Minister and Chancellor, Science Secretary Peter Kyle laid out a detailed plan to ‘turbocharge AI’. The new ‘AI Opportunities Action Plan’ set out how the government will support AI to boost the economy and improve the productivity of the public sector. Given the Labour’s questionable commitment to growth, this was a rare ray of good hope.
On the same day, Research England, a quango that allocates just over £2 billion of taxpayer funding a year, set out the next steps in its controversial plan to shift the emphasis of its funding from scientific excellence to what it calls ‘People, Culture and Environment’ – effectively a euphemism for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI).
Research England is piloting new metrics for how it will allocate funding, such as the proportion of research staff who are women or from ethnic minorities, as well as details on mean and median pay gaps.
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