The Telegraph My details My newsletters Logout Upgrade to Premium My details My newsletters Logout The Telegraph Britain shines in AI - but let's nurture it 3 March 2016 • 6:40pm become In 2008, three Cambridge graduates founded an app called Swiftkey, which uses artificial intelligence to predict the next word you write with extreme accuracy.
 The friends Jon Reynolds, Ben Medlock and Chris Hill-Scott, who later sold his stake in the startup for a bicycle, created an alternative keyboard app used on 300m smartphones which learns users’ typing habits over time.
 The technology even helps power British physicist Stephen Hawking's speech system, roughly doubling his speech rate and reducing the errors he makes while typing.
 In February, American tech giant Microsoft unexpectedly announced it had bought Swiftkey for $250m (£176m).
 Needless to say, the technology will ultimately be integrated with Microsoft’s own products, to make them smarter and more intuitive.
 Swiftkey founders Jon Reynolds and Dr Ben Medlock Swiftkey founders Jon Reynolds and Dr Ben Medlock Credit: CREDIT: PA While this is a moment of celebration for UK entrepreneurs and investors, it’s not the first British artificial intelligence company that’s caught the fancy of a Silicon Valley monolith.
 The pattern is impossible to ignore.
 Look at the world’s biggest companies – Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft.
 All have been drawn to Britain’s disproportionately large pool of talented artificial intelligence entrepreneurs.
 British AI companies are crushing global competition.
 But we shouldn’t be satisfied just being singled out by California’s titans.
 We need to nurture and grow these bright sparks into the next generation of tech giants that will power everything from healthcare to counter-terrorism and global governance.
 "Yes, Britain shines in AI – but we shouldn’t willingly give up our crown.
" Back in 2012, Amazon was the first to start the trend – the Seattle e-tailer acquired Evi Technologies, a Cambridge-based startup whose platform can understand and communicate in natural language, making it a super-intelligent search tool.
 Although the company has been extremely quiet since it was bought, Amazon opened up a drone-testing lab for its Prime Air service in Cambridge in 2014, which suggests a potential goal for Evi’s research.
 Last year, Apple made an extremely similar Cambridge-based acquisition – it bought VocalIQ, a software system that teaches computers to speak more like humans, and understand natural language more easily.
 In Apple’s case, the application is clear: its voice-activated assistant Siri has vastly improved since it first launched, but still struggles to understand different accents and specific commands.
 VocalIQ should be able to help hone Siri’s speech and comprehension skills, making it far more human-like in its interactions.
 Gary Kasparov was defeated by IBM's Deep Blue at chess in 1997 Gary Kasparov was defeated by IBM's Deep Blue at chess in 1997 - an AI milestone Credit: CREDIT: EPA When Google bought a little-known company called DeepMind for a hefty £400m in 2014 – its largest ever European acquisition – the startup didn’t even have a product for sale.
 Next week, DeepMind will take on a world-first challenge – it will pit its AI algorithm against a human champion in the notoriously complex Chinese board game, Go.
 If the algorithm beats the Korean master, it will be the first time in history we have built a machine capable of this uniquely human pursuit.
 It will be an AI milestone no one has ever crossed.
 Founded by two young Britons Mustafa Suleyman and Cambridge graduate Demis Hassabis, DeepMind has assembled 250 of the world’s most respected artificial intelligence researchers right here in London.
 The company has now acquired two more British AI companies, Dark Blue Labs and Vision Factory, both spun out from Oxford University.
 Just today, payments giant Mastercard announced it will be using AI technology built by Rainbird, a Norwich-based startup that creates systems that can make human-like decisions.
 Mastercard will use its smarts to power an automated, virtual sales assistant.
 The AI salesperson will have the work experience gleaned from the entire sales team and the thousands of customer conversations, and predict exactly which calls might convert to sales.
 So what makes Britain so strong in this deeply competitive area?
 The clue is in the locations of the startups.
 British universities specifically Cambridge, Oxford, Imperial College and University College London, are breeding grounds for the new generation of artificial intelligence companies mushrooming in Britain.
 "Machine learning powers everything from Netflix recommendations to your Facebook newsfeed and Google search results.
" Investors who have nurtured the companies from the early days say that founders are building on cutting-edge machine learning research done by academics at these institutions in recent years.
 That's not hard to believe: the UK has an illustrious heritage in artificial intelligence research, starting with its founding father, Alan Turing.
 Although the term “artificial intelligence” itself was only coined in 1956, two years after Turing died, he proposed the conundrum of whether machines could really “think” back in 1950, when computers were just invented.
 His Turing Test is still the ultimate differentiator between human and machine.
 Artificial intelligence may seem like the domain of geeks and scientists, but increasingly it is intertwined with our everyday lives.
 Machine learning powers everything from Netflix recommendations to your Facebook newsfeed and Google search results.
 Soon it will power your home and your car.
 According to technology research firm Tractica, the artificial intelligence market is set to reach $11.
1bn by 2024.
 It’s clear why AI smarts are so highly in demand from large technology companies who want to predict our online behaviours.
 While Britain is certainly benefiting from this demand, we should be making the most of our heritage, and world-leading scientists, helping to grow these companies into independent and powerful entities.
 Yes, Britain shines in AI – but we shouldn’t so willingly give up our crown.
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