The Tony Blair Institute has called on the government to raise manufacturing’s share of UK gross value added from 8 per cent to 10 per cent by 2031, arguing that the countries set to gain most from the artificial intelligence boom will be those that make the physical equipment the technology depends on.
The think tank said the 2031 goal should be followed by a “subsequent target” of 12 per cent to 14 per cent. A 10 per cent share would be a 20-year high.
Its report argued that physical inputs to frontier technologies such as AI, quantum computing and robotics would become the “key bottleneck”.
“The ultimate digital technology, the one that feels the most abstract and removed from the physical world, will make physical capital matter more than ever,” the report said. “The real winners will therefore be the countries that not only adopt AI, but create the physical things that AI depends on.”
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